Some perspective

To put the market impact of the Iran conflict into perspective, today’s chart shows the performance of the Dow Jones during World War II, alongside an instructive comment from Warren Buffett on what to own in wartime:

“Well, if you tell me all of that [major wars] is going to happen, I will still be buying stock. You're going to invest your money in something over time. The one thing you could be quite sure of is if we went into some very major war, the value of money would go down. That's happened in virtually every war that I'm aware of.

So, the last thing you'd want to do is hold money during a war. You might want to own a farm, you might want to own an apartment house, you might want to own securities. During World War II, you know, the stock market advanced. The stock market's going to advance over time. American businesses are going to be worth more money. Now, dollars are going to be worth less, so that money won't buy you quite as much, but you're going to be a lot better off owning productive assets over the next 50 years than you will be owning pieces of paper.”