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When stocks begin to fall hard after a fairly lengthy bull market, it’s somewhat inevitable that a sense of foreboding grips the marketplace and some investment soul-searching will ensue.
 
In perusing the financial media, a few articles have surfaced in recent days that embrace the spirit of trying to make sense of it all.
 
These pieces often have a shelf life long beyond impassioned articles about a particular stock that may be oversold right now.
 
I’ll start with a piece in the Atlantic -- a general interest publication not known for its financial savvy -- with this confession: I wish I’d written it myself since, despite a few blemishes, it sums up the way I think about investing.              

The piece is provocatively entitled “The Best Investing Advice Has Always Been Too Boring for TV.”
 
At a time like this, when stocks look lately as if they are confirming the bears’ worst suspicions, some investors panic and are driven away from the marketplace. Others see it as a time to buy simply because many others are running for the exits.
 
Indeed, Monday’s modest rebound in the indexes may, at least for now, support the latter view.
 
But as Atlantic writer Harold Pollack puts it, “there’s no particular reason, other than curiosity, for ordinary investors to examine the stock market’s performance more than once or twice a year—plenty of evidence indicates that it’s incredibly difficult to hand-pick stocks or time the market.
 
“This finding might bruise some egos, but it’s actually great news,” he adds. “It should free up any time spent scrutinizing the market for more rewarding endeavors. That’s precisely the message the financial media ought to send in turbulent times, when ordinary investors are most tempted to engage in panic-selling—or alternatively, trying to be clairvoyant in timing global-securities markets. The truth is that the same boring index funds that made sense last month, last year, and five years ago still make sense today.”
 
Seems that a bit more vigilance is probably in order than a mere once or twice a year look at a portfolio. It doesn’t hurt to take a look at the portfolio statements each month to see if one’s asset allocation targets are still in line. (It also doesn’t hurt to make sure that one’s advisor isn’t up to anything you might disapprove of.) But even if Pollack’s approach might be a bit too laid back for many, he is striking the right chord.
 
Though Barron’s writes mainly for investors and market professionals who believe in a more active approach to investing, even Barron’s in recent years – with its growing coverage of funds and ETFs – recognizes that a growing share of investors subscribe to a more passive approach to investing.
 
In the same spirit of the Atlantic article, a piece by Jeff Sommer, a long-time editor with the New York Times’ Sunday business section, discusses the salutary effects that the stock market swoon of 2016 should have on investors.                   

“It provides yet another reminder that investing in stocks is inherently risky: Unless you are prepared to accept losses, you should not be in the market,” writes Sommer.
 
The piece contains an interesting confession from Bespoke Investment Group, a research firm widely quoted in Barron’s and other publications.
 
Sommer writes that Bespoke recently began a 2016 look-ahead piece with a rather disarming statement about where it sees stocks heading: ‘We have no idea.’ ”
 
As Sommer points out, the Bespoke report reviewed the recent history of Wall Street predictions and found them wanting.
 
“Since 2000, it found, the consensus has called for an average yearly increase in the S&P 500 of about 9.5%,” Sommer writes. “The actual average annual change was less than 4%, however, and consensus predictions were inaccurate in every single year, sometimes by preposterous margins. In 2001, for example, the consensus called for a gain of 20.7% But the index fell by 13%. In the horrible year of 2008, the consensus was that the market would rise 11.1%. As many investors may recall, it fell by 38.5%. Not once since 2000 has Wall Street predicted that the market would decline in a calendar year. Yet the market actually fell in five of those years.”
 
Unlike the aforementioned writers, Barry Ritholtz is actually a player in the markets as well as a financial journalist.
 
In a recent piece for the Washington Post, Ritholtz writes a piece on the “do’s and don’t’s” that any investor should employ in the wake of the recent market drop.
Much of the advice – such as sticking to one’s investment plan and ignoring market timing – is stuff you’ve read a thousand times before. Indeed, Ritholtz has written much of this advice himself in the past year in other articles.
 
But he makes one point that may be a little less obvious and should be encouraging to investors during tough times: Do take notice at how cyclical markets are.
 
“Between 1950 and 2014, half of all annual periods saw a correction of 10% or worse,” he writes.
 
“From the August highs to Friday, U.S. markets are down (surprise!) about 10%. Don’t be surprised if in two, four and six years from now, those markets also see a 10 to 20% correction.”