Advice: When the Stock Market Drops, Stay Calm and Do Nothing

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Think of what’s happening in the stock market as a kind of fire drill. As we all know from childhood, one of the primary rules is not to panic. And in this case, panicking would mean selling stocks when the market is falling. You run drills to stay sharp, but we haven’t had much experience with the S&P 500 stock index falling by more than 3 percent in a single day. According to Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices, the last time it happened was Sept. 13, 2022. Given that it’s been a nearly two-year stretch, we can excuse ourselves for getting a bit sloppy. So many people got nervous and ran to check or trade investments Monday morning, and many of them had trouble logging into brokerage firm websites and apps including those of Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Vanguard. But really, why sell at a moment like this? It’s not a rhetorical question, so let’s try to answer it.