What have we learned over the past week or two or four?

For one thing, we learned — or relearned — that equities tend to rebound fairly quickly from geopolitical setbacks absent a compelling reason not to.

That’s particularly true when profit expectations are on an upswing, as they are currently. Indeed, as SocGen’s Andrew Lapthorne pointed out this week, we’re witnessing the largest rolling four-month increase in global EPS expectations ever, and the biggest percentage increase outside of rebounds from recessions.

Double-digit single-month gains for the S&P are exceedingly rare — fewer than three-dozen in almost a century. It’s thus fair to call April’s 10.4% advance for the US benchmark anomalous.

If you missed the rally… well, I’ll be polite and eschew the “I told you sos” (except for that one) in favor of noting that when markets are hedged for a cataclysm, it’s hard for spot equities to “realize” a crash.

As the war raged, skew (and put skew) steepened sharply, while call skew was bombed out (no war pun intended). In simple terms: Folks took out plenty of protection against a left-tail scenario, but no one owned the right-tail.

All that bought protection helped put a floor under things, and when Donald Trump pivoted on the war at the end of March, just ahead of earnings season, the move back higher wrong-footed a market positioned for the worst. An upside chase commenced with a kicker from a ridiculous semi rally. The rest, as they say, is history.

We also learned that you can lead a group of Iranian generals to the water, but you can’t make ’em drink. The IRGC was handed an opportunity last month to end the war with Trump in exchange for massive sanctions relief that would’ve flooded the dollar-parched Iranian economy with hard currency ripe for the skimming with no interference from meddlesome clerics. All they had to do was promise not to make a nuclear bomb and — I don’t know — dye some sand neon green, label it “Nuclear Dust” and send it to the Pentagon.

Alas, they’re a hard-headed bunch, those Guards. And so Trump was “forced” to sustain a naval blockade of Iranian ports. The IRGC reciprocated and Brent was on its way to a second consecutive weekly advance.

At one juncture Thursday, the front-month contract hit levels last witnessed in and around the onset of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine which, as a quick but important aside, has by now killed somewhere between 250,000 and half a million people.

Regular readers know how I feel about this: The Guards should take a modified “Delcy deal.” They can’t beat a full-on US naval blockade. They just can’t. Eventually, if Trump keeps it up, they’ll have to shut-in production. And it seems just as likely as not he’ll start bombing again if the stalemate lasts too much longer. Israel, meanwhile, is more than willing to assassinate Guards chief Ahmad Vahidi and security boss Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr if that’s what it takes.

Moving on, and zooming in on the past several days, we learned the Bank of England and the ECB are indeed in a bind: Much as they’d rather not, they may have to hike rates at some point this year, perhaps soon, if the energy shock doesn’t abate. In Japan, Kazuo Ueda faced three dissents (for a hike) this week while keeping rates on hold. The government had to intervene to stanch the bleeding in the yen.

We also learned Jerome Powell’s going to stick around on the Fed board until he’s sure the immediate threat to the institution’s independence has passed. Theoretically, he could stay on as a governor until January of 2028.

Between a trio of quasi-dissents calling for a hawkish tweak to the forward guidance in the FOMC statement and Powell’s possible dissent against near-term rate cuts, Kevin Warsh might have a rough go of things if he intends to please Trump with cuts right out of the gate.

Finally, we learned that “hyper-scalers gonna hyper-scale,” so to speak. Following reports from Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, projections for 2026 capex across the four were revised to reflect almost $720 billion in spending this year.

That’s up 90% from 2025 and — chuckles — 650% since 2020.

If you’re a shareholder, that’s either good news or terrifying. I suppose it could be both if you’re optimistic on the opportunity but concerned about the sheer size of the gamble.

One thing’s fairly clear: All that spending’s good for the US economy in the near-term. Business investment was quite strong in the advance read on Q1 GDP this week.

So, where does all that leave us? Regrettably, I’m compelled to say none the wiser. But, after another several records on the S&P, at least we’re a little richer. In nominal terms, anyway.