Nicole Lapin

Middle East airspace is effectively closed.

Routes are being rerouted and consumer anxiety about travel in wartime environments is absolutely real.

Cruise lines, hotel chains and tourism exposed stocks all sold off.

And I will tell you from 25 years covering business news, it is not uncommon to see the stock market as a whole fall when there's conflict abroad.

The S&P 500 opened sharply lower on Monday morning, but it did not sink as low as you might expect.

Interestingly, it recovered almost entirely by the time the market closed.

The S&P 500 ended Monday basically flat.

The Nasdaq actually ended up slightly higher.

What happened here was that investors bought the dip, particularly in cash-rich tech names like Nvidia and Microsoft, which historically hold their value much better than most in conflict-driven sell-offs.

Here's the broader historical pattern worth really understanding.

Markets almost always overreact to geopolitical events in the short term and then recover.

Here's the thing.

Markets always, always, always recover.

We just don't know exactly when.

So an uptick in oil stocks, an uptick in defense and gold and a dip in travel stocks are all really predictable trends when the war escalates in the Middle East.

But trying to time the dip and the recovery in the overall market is way more of a challenge.

In other words, I just wouldn't do it.

So how long will we see oil go up?

What should we do with our portfolios?

Well, none of us can predict the future, but here's my take.