Should you be worried about last Thursday’s DOW plunge?

Should you be worried about last Thursday’s DOW plunge?

Unless you were literally living under a rock, you already know that the stock market took a dive last Thursday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DOW) falling by 317 points and wiping out all of its gains since the beginning of the year.  

You likely have a few questions rattling around in your head:

• As an investor, should you be worried?
• Should you be thinking about exiting the equity market altogether?
• Is this the beginning of the next crash that some gurus have been predicting?

Without complicating things, let me put it this way. If you are losing sleep over what happened last Thursday in the stock market, you need to be extremely worried – not because of this drop, but because you have a flawed investing strategy. Of course I’m not happy that the DOW plunged by 317 points. In fact, I’d have preferred it to go the opposite direction and increase by that amount. For heaven’s sake, I manage equity portfolios for some of our clients, so I always want them to make huge profits.

But is it realistic for me – or anyone – to expect the markets to keep going up forever? Of course not! So here’s what you need to know about investing in the stock market.

First, it can and does go up, but it goes down, too.

Second, no one – and I mean no single human being on this planet (yes, including your trusted financial advisor and favorite media money guru) – can predict the exact future movements of the stock market. Again, no one knows where the markets are headed, beyond the fact we just established: that they might go up or they might go down. This may be difficult to swallow, because it’s tempting to actually believe that some of the talking heads in the media can actually predict the future of the markets. But they cannot. Consider this. Did anyone tell you or the rest of the investing world that Argentina was going to default on its debts last Thursday – and as a result, the DOW would plunge by 317 points? No!

Now don’t take this to imply that you should just throw your hard-earned money into some mutual funds and remain helpless, hoping you’ll one day get lucky and be in the right place at the right time, as far as the stock markets go. There is such a thing as an efficient and prudent strategy, when it comes to ensuring that your equity portfolio will yield tangible results over time. And it doesn’t involve worry or losing sleep about temporary fluctuations along way. In other words, if your portfolio is not prepared for these dips, then by all means you should be worried.

Our clients with equity portfolios were prepared for last week’s drop. You, too, can remove the speculation and gambling from your investment portfolio so that you can go about your life without being sucked in by the day-to-day fluctuation drama. Want to know how? Schedule your complimentary visit with one of our first-rate financial professionals today! Call 877.656.9111 or visit LaserFG.com to schedule your no-strings-attached consultation. You can take control of your investments!