Stay The Course

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There has been a lot of conversation (mostly outside of here) about what the stock market is doing, and what people should do. I'm a bit known for my bit of knowledge about the markets and money matters and so a lot of people have come to me with one simple question. What do you do in a market like this? For me, the answer is pretty simple. Nothing. In a market like this you do nothing. Because markets do this all the time. And so even though on paper you may be losing thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars... You still do nothing. The fact remains. What is the reason that you EVER sell a stock? The answer is again pretty simple. You sell a stock when you have made your anticipated gain, and feel that the stock has met your desired result OR you sell a stock when the fundamentals change and the investment no longer looks attractive or is viable. Perhaps, for example, the price is going down and you determine that the stock is going down for a REASON. You sell in that scenario. You never sell a stock that is going down for reasons like whole market influences. In this case, the Coronavirus scare. So long as the fundamentals are strong, and nothing about the company's true valuation has changed, and so long as there is no indication of any direct impact catalyst for the stock being adversely affected by what is influencing the entire market down... You stay the course and do nothing. On the flip side the only thing you MAY do is BUY MORE. If all of the underlying fundamentals are strong, what you are getting is a valuable share at a discounted price. Every single time the markets have gone down, even after major crashes, it has always come right back up and went right PAST where it left off before the drop. And always keep in mind that it is in fact just a paper loss. It doesn't become a realized loss unless you panic and sell the stock. Mark my words. Next week may turn out to be a bit rocky. But I think we will see some stabilization, and follow me on this... By the time the week of the 16th starts I think we will see the markets slowly giving back a lot of what it gave up.