Current Market Volatility

As the U.S. mortgage crisis continues to send waves around world financial markets, major world equity indices are off 8-10%. Our Portfolio Strategist, Vincent DeLisle, wrote earlier this week that he believes we may have gone through 80% of the potential decline. Time will tell.

It is not uncommon for markets to pull back. Equity markets regularly have corrections of less than 5%, corrections of 5 to 10% typically occur once or twice a year, and bear markets, defined as more than 20% corrections, occur every 4 years or so. This current, intermediate type of correction may take one to three months to resolve itself.

We know that market volatility is unsettling to investors. To help give you perspective on the current situation, we have attached below a report prepared earlier this week by our Portfolio Advisory Team.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please call.

Bev

Volatile Markets – Stick to your long term strategy (pdf-37kb)