Matt Frankel

I don't know if you're in the same boat.

So essentially all that's happened is that the president is agreeing to delay escalating the conflict even further.

He's not really dialing back to anything that's already happening at this point.

It's just delaying what he threatened to do to escalate it even further.

So keep that in mind.

Sure.

And if I'm being totally honest, this is one of the reasons why I generally don't own energy stocks in my portfolio.

They can be more unpredictable than most of the other sectors I like to invest in.

So if you have stock in Chevron or Exxon or any of these really well-run oil businesses, even things like war, weather, if a hurricane happens, for example, they can move the price of oil dramatically through no fault of the company.

The company can be doing everything it's supposed to be doing, and you need to be prepared for that as an investor.

We've seen massive swings.

Even before the Iran conflict started, the worse than expected winter weather was driving the price of oil up.

So there's a lot that can go wrong in oil.

But you're right, John, and you kind of alluded to this.

The moves in oil prices have much more economic implications beyond just higher or lower prices at the gas pump.

I mean, the transportation costs of getting food to grocery stores, there's a bunch of different kind of trickle-down effects, but none of those are permanent.

They're all just kind of ebbs and flows in the economy.

I mean, energy costs, transportation costs, materials costs,

Those are all going to be a little bit erratic over time.

But when you zoom out, the impact of transportation costs on things like grocery prices really tends to smooth out over time.