Author - Sam Fawaz, CPA, CFP®

It’s been a long time, more than a year, since I’ve posted an article about what’s going on in the markets. Market volatility, until last week, has been mostly subdued. For what seems like years now, markets seemed immune from any meaningful drop. But this still young month of February has seen volatility return with a vengeance.

This means that the U.S. stock market will finally get something that happens, on average, about once a year: a 10+% percent drop—the definition of a market correction.  The last time this happened, known as a bear market, was a whopper: the Great …

“Good sense, innocence, cripplin’ mankind
Dead kings, many things I can’t define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothin’ to lose”

— Song Lyrics from the 1967 hit single “Incense & Peppermints” written by Tim Gilbert & John S. Carter and performed by the group known as The Strawberry Alarm Clock

Suppose somebody came up to you and shouted: “I have terrible news about the economy. I think you should sell your stocks!”
Alarmed, you say: “Oh, my God. Tell me more!”
And this …

I’ve never seen anything like it. The mere mention of Amazon eyeing another kind of business can send chills down traders’ backs who might own stocks in that line of business. It seems no one wants to be caught owning the next business Amazon might want to conquer.

As a result, on Tuesday morning, Wall Street traders woke up to something they haven’t experienced much of lately: actual market volatility.  One trader posted an image of his Bloomberg terminal at the market opening, which showed an immediate scary-looking plunge in U.S. equities as the opening bell rung.  By the end …