In a recent article by Bryce Sanders in a commentary written for ThinkAdvisor magazine, we were reminded that “Television programming is funded by advertising. Advertisers want viewership. One of the best ways TV news programs can keep people watching is to make everything a crisis.” While news is important, it’s still necessary to step back and put things into perspective. For example, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average trading around 25,000 it’s important to realize a decline of -799.36 (as we saw on Tuesday, Dec 4) is a -3% drop. Did you know that for all of 2018 we have seen four daily declines of greater than -3% and this was the smallest of them? These were on Feb. 5th, Feb. 8th, Oct. 10th and then again on Tuesday, Dec. 4th. To the contrary, we have seen five days with returns greater than +2% and 26 days with a positive return greater than +1%. The market will fluctuate. But remember from each of the previous declines we eventually recovered. The amount of time varies. Sometimes it was within a week and as we saw in 2008 it took a handful of years. The important thing to put into perspective is not every decline is a “crisis” and investors who stuck to their plan and didn’t panic eventually recovered, often going on to new investment highs. Talk to your financial advisor to help put today’s volatile markets into perspective.