NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–With the stock market in the red again Friday 

following Thursday’s sharp decline, many investors seemed to be taking the 

week’s drop calmly. A few expressed worry but others bravely looked to wade 

deeper into the market. 

  Financial advisors around the country say that investors’ growing 

sophistication is helping clients remain stoic: They have already survived 

February’s downturn, and the concepts of asset allocation and long-term 

investing have been pounded into them. 

  That’s not to say that no one is nervous. 

  “They’re worried. They’re saying, ‘What’s happening with the subprime? Are 

the markets completely falling out of bed?’” said Arthur Black, a New York 

City wealth manager who has gotten about six calls from clients in the last 

week. “Markets like this give everyone enough of a scare to say ‘What’s 

happening here?’” 

  But with most major stock indexes up overall for the year, financial 

advisors say this week’s decline isn’t creating the kind of panic that it 

might have a decade ago. 

  “You don’t quite see what we used to see when the markets came apart. 

Investors seem to be more seasoned,” said Robert Weissenstein, managing 

director and chief investment officer for the Private Banking Americas unit of 

Credit Suisse Group (CS). “People do understand that markets can sell off 

without vaporizing entirely. There’s more of an ability to digest some of 

these moves.” 

  Craig Rappaport, Author: “Live Long Live Rich”a said that nowadays investors “see downdrafts in the market as an 

opportunity to buy things rather than to panic out.” 

  Indeed, many financial advisors reported that their clients were looking to 

buy into the market. Gene Foxworth, a Charleston, S.C. financial advisor, said 

an 81-year-old client called him about the drop. Although Foxworth thought the 

client had called out of worry, the man actually wanted to invest more money 

in stocks. 

  Bill Hilgedick, a financial advisor with Edward Jones in Eau Claire, Wis., 

said he is seeing the same reaction as some clients try to diversify by buying 

stock in sectors underrepresented in their portfolios. 

  “Yesterday was a busy day,” Hilgedick said Friday. “I was placing a lot of 

buy orders.” 

  For investors who engage in short-term trading, this week was rough, 

Rappaport said. “Do you know how to spell angst? Traders trying to enter and 

exit strategically are finding it not very doable in a market that’s 

collapsing,” he said. 

  Financial advisors were warning against bailing out altogether. David Tysk, 

a financial planner with Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP) in Bloomington, 

Minn., compared the markets to teenagers with a curfew: They won’t behave the 

way you want them to. 

  “We have to have a long-term strategy and methodology in place,” Tysk said. 

“We do people a big disservice by highlighting these big market swings. The 

markets are supposed to fluctuate. The markets are doing exactly what they’re 

supposed to be doing.” 

  The market’s loss, said Jerry Miccolis, a financial planner in Morristown, 

N.J., “was large in absolute terms…but in relative terms it was not 

dramatic.” On Thursday, “nearly everything went down. When you look at the 

whole market sliding, the last thing you want to do is liquidate.” 

  Many financial advisors want to keep their clients focused on the long haul. 

To that end, Foxworth said, he isn’t even reaching out to clients to head off 

their anxiety. 

  “We talk to people about asset allocation and long-term investing,” he said. 

“To pick up the phone and call people may send the wrong signal.” 

  Dick Bellmer, a financial planner at Deerfield Financial Advisors in 

Indianapolis, said a decline “doesn’t make anybody feel good.” He said he 

constantly reminds his clients of the importance of sticking to predetermined 

asset allocation, regardless of where the market moves. 

  He has reassured some clients that, despite this week’s drop, their 

portfolios are up overall for the year. “If people don’t panic, they’ll be 

better in the long run,” he said. 

  Adam E. Carlin, a financial advisor with Citigroup Inc.’s (C) Smith Barney 

in Coral Gables, Fla., received two calls since the market dropped - both from 

new clients. One, a doctor from New York, emailed Carlin shortly before the 

market decline to say that she wanted to discuss investing more aggressively. 

Out of concern that she might not have understood the risks, he emailed her 

back to say that he wanted to meet and talk this over. After the market 

dropped, he contacted her again, and she replied that maybe she had gotten a 

bit ahead of herself. 

  “Once you have had an opportunity to educate clients,” Carlin said, “you 

don’t get the panicked emails or phone calls.”