Take a deep breath! Patience pays off.

 Even the best money managers and analysts can't predict the markets with certainty, making it less likely that average investors can do the same. A surefire way to make a financial misstep is to make an emotionally charged financial decision, especially in the middle of a whipsaw market. For that reason, I recommend taking a step back during times of financial gyrations to focus on the basics of financial planning and your goals. Markets are not linear and if you look at any chart of investment markets, you will see that those charts reveal that markets move both up and down. It is nearly impossible to avoid the "downs" and only experience the "ups". There are strategies that I use to try to minimize the "downs" but there is no such thing as a "guru"or methodology that can predict the future. 

What we are experiencing now is a normal and expected correction that is WAY overdue. Since 1929, we have had just about as many corrections as we have had Christmases. We know that Christmas is coming and we should also expect that corrections are coming as well, but when we do experience a correction, we act as though the world is coming to an end and we will lose all of our money. History has shown just the opposite happens. We actually become richer if we are patient and do not react by selling and do just the opposite by buying those dips. The ONLY factor in how we do is time. Even the latest "deep" recession of 2007-2009 showed us that markets have always recovered if given a little time. There has never been a point in history (and there are many very scary periods) that we have not recovered our loses. The investors who lost money are the ones that sold out of fear and could never re-enter because markets rose after their emotional decision to sell and wait for a bottom to re-enter that never materialized. After the loses in 2008, the markets made back much of the losses experienced in a very short period of time. If you made that emotional decision to sell because you could not take it anymore, you unfortunately caused yourself loses that are now permanent and can never be made back. Think about it, the emotional decision to sell caused exactly the outcome you were trying to avoid.

Instead of panicking or getting emotional, consider these times a gift. This is the best time to tax harvest (selling positions with big gains or even positions with losses) and re-allocating to better fit your situation. This is also the best time to consider Roth conversions as now your tax liability to do so is diminished. This is also the best time to bargain hunt for those great investments that are on sale because they went down as a result of markets tanking, and have the same or sometimes even stronger positioning in the world. In my career, these are the times that I have had the best results because it allowed me to bargain hunt and make money with less risk.

The best news of all......  unpredictable market corrections will come, now we know exactly when this one will occur!!!!