Investors are in the midst of an ongoing selloff. The Chinese stock market's troubles are leading to big questions about how much that country's problems will be a drag on the rest of the global economy. Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down nearly 600 points, or 3.5 percent.
So, what are average investors to do? Nothing — hang tight. At least that's what most financial experts say.
But that advice is easier to give than follow. When pushed off a cliff, one's natural instinct is to grab for anything to stop the fall.
Within the past week, the Dow has fallen nearly 10 percent. Morgan Housel, a senior analyst with Motley Fool, says investors feel a similar impulse to stop the fall by selling off their stocks, despite the advice almost all analysts give: To accept — even embrace! — the inevitable ups and downs of the market.
Housel, who studies and writes about the behavioral psychology of markets, says volatility prevents dangerous feedback loops in the economy.
"If we never had crashes in the stock market, if was no big volatility, there would be no risk," he says. "And if there was no risk, then everyone would pile in at same time and get a high return on your money. And if everyone did at the same time, stocks would get really expensive we have a bubble and the stock market would crash."
"Hang on, stay the course" is a message most investment advisers repeat to their clients every time their portfolio takes a beating. And yet, Housel says, it's a lesson that never seems to stick.
"With 24/7 cable news, and Twitter, and stock update on your iPhone, I think of anything that probably makes it a little bit worse; it increases the idea that we need to act now," the analyst says — while admitting that, a member of the media himself, he might be part of the problem.
Investors sought comfort and moral support on Twitter yesterday, using the hashtag #BlackMonday. Many others turned to their brokerage firms, some of which reported technical problems because of very high volumes of customers trying to execute trades on their sites early in the day.
But Ric Edelman thinks the investing public is much calmer this time around. He's chairman and CEO of Edelman Financial Services.
"What we have to recognize is that our emotions are enemies when it comes to personal finance," Edelman says, adding that his clients these days are better able to distinguish between losses and volatility, which only means loss if investors sell in a down cycle.
In fact, he says, many clients see this as a buying opportunity.
"Wall Street's on sale, and smart shoppers know the time to buy is when prices are low," he says.
Edelman says investors have lived through several crashes — including the 2008 financial crisis — only to see the market nearly triple in value from its lowest point.
"People now have developed a lot of experience, and they've realized that during very scary moments, you could be compelled to sell out of fear — but that always proves to be the wrong thing to do at the wrong time," he says.
Brennan Miller is vice president and branch manager of Charles Schwab's Chicago offices. He says that traffic and call volume are up over the past week, and that some of those calls are coming from investors who want to put more money in the stock market because they see bargains.
But plenty of the callers are scared — and some defy the advice to stay the course, because they realize they simply don't have the stomach for sudden drops.
"If you're not really going through a market decline, you might say on paper, 'oh yeah no problem if not not a problem at all,' " Miller says. "But then you actually go through a period like this, and you realize, 'oh my goodness I can't I can't sleep at night, I can't make it through — I think I want to sell out.' "
And for those people, Miller advises thinking carefully about just how much exposure to the stock market they really want.
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