ANSWERS TO THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why the Ukraine War Hasn’t Crashed the Stock Market.

To paraphrase JP Morgan banker Jamie Dimon’s advice to investors and analysts this week, everything looks pretty good except the possibility that something really bad could happen.

The stock market, so far, has largely recapitulated its pattern from past wars: sell the rumor, buy the news. The S&P 500 hit a recent low on Feb. 23, the day before Russia’s invasion. It’s up 167 points since then.

A Canadian fund manager made news by advising his investors to keep buying stocks because in an all-out nuclear war their portfolio allocation would be irrelevant anyway. Looking back and trying to explain a modest 7% drop during the Cuban missile crisis, economists reached for a similar explanation: There’s no point discounting a worst-case outcome because nobody will be around to benefit from a wise investment decision.

Fritz Todt, who built the autobahn, told Hitler in November 1941 the war could not be won and must be ended politically. Hitler responded: “I can scarcely still see a way of coming politically to an end.”

The führer was talking his book. Negotiated endings are always on the cards, as they now could be for Vladimir Putin. There was no “existential” risk for Germany. Even under the rigorous terms actually imposed—unconditional surrender—Germany survived and quickly was on its way to becoming the leading state in Europe. The “existential” risk belonged to Hitler; under any settlement that might be envisaged, he would have had to leave power and accept accountability for his crimes.

Mr. Putin, in astonishingly short order, has turned his Ukraine lark into a similar risk not for Russia but for Mr. Putin.

In the interim, though: Zelensky warns the world to ‘prepare’ for Putin to unleash a nuclear attack. “‘Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons,’ [CIA Director William Burns] said​ during a speech last Thursday at Georgia Tech University.”