There is a lot of news swirling around about various central banks injecting liquidity including the Reserve Bank of Australia which also raised its rate this week.

Ashraf Laidi from CMC Markets said on the show Foreign Exchange that this is worse than 1998. If that is correct we should brace for a lot more equity selling. I have to say I don’t know if it is worse than 1998. If it compares to 1998, well we have already had one of these and so while there might be more selling, might there be a faster snapback?

In terms of managing emotion, for anyone feeling emotion, this is a fast decline. People worry during fast declines and don’t worry during slow declines. The nature of fast declines is they snap back quickly. We saw some of this earlier this week and I think we would see more snapback whenever this round of the selloff exhausts.

I repeat this sort of thing often because it always seems to be true and also to try to convey the extent to which this sort of trading is normal market behavior that has happened many times before and will happen many times in the future. I also try to convey my lack of emotion during all types of market moves. I think that my remaining unemotional and showing this over and over might help some folks be less emotional too.

In managing your own portfolio calm and rational is probably the better way to go. Hopefully you have some sort of trigger point for some sort of defensive action and all you need to do is stick to it, this is also something I repeat over and over.

No matter what you think about this, it has happened before, been worse and come back.

Last 5 posts by Roger Nusbaum

• The Big Picture for the Week of November 15, 2009 - November 14th, 2009
• Process Drilldown - October 23rd, 2009
• Sunday Morning Coffee 10-18-09 - October 18th, 2009
• A Little Followup From This Morning - October 8th, 2009
• Wednesday Roundup - October 7th, 2009