A reader wrote yesterday, confused. The gist: there's a war on, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is above $100 — and the stock market just shrugs it all off. What gives?

It's a fair question. And I think a lot of people are asking some version of it right now. So let's look at something.

There's a measure called the CAPE — the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio. Unlike the regular P/E, which just looks at the last twelve months of earnings, the CAPE smooths out a full decade of data to cut through the noise. It's the closest thing we have to a reliable gauge of whether the stock market is cheap or expensive relative to what companies actually earn over time.

Right now, the CAPE is sitting at almost 40. Take a look.