Despite stock markets getting crushed Wednesday, strategists say not only are sell-offs like this normal, they create opportunities for savvy investors.
“Warren Buffett’s not panicking,” Michael Farr, president and CEO of Washington, DC-based wealth management firm Farr, Miller & Washington told CNBC. “It’s a bucket of cold water but take a deep breath and know these things happen — let it work itself out.”
Farr highlighted that markets go through periods of volatility and downturns, an easy thing for investors to lose sight of after a historic nine-year bull market.
“You need to be greedy when others are fearful,” Farr said. “We did make lower lows here but have your list.”
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR, also advised to “start making a list.” He said Wednesday’s market drop could be weighing down companies that otherwise have strong earnings and fundamentals.
“If companies are doing fine and giving good guidance and good earnings, and they’re just going down because the markets are going down, that’s the time you want to sharpen your pencil and look for things you’ve missed in the past,” Hogan said. “They’re presenting great opportunities right now.”
Karen Finerman, CEO of Metropolitan Capital Advisors, echoed that playbook and said to “buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if it’s your own blood.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 600 points Wednesday and erased all of its gains for 2018. The S&P 500 dropped 3.1 percent and also turned negative for the year, while Nasdaq Composite fell 4.4 percent as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet all traded lower. A sharp drop in tech shares and worries about corporate earnings added fuel to this month’s steep pullback.
Brian Belski, BMO Capital Markets chief investment strategist, highlighted some companies beating earnings for the third quarter — Oracle, Boeing, Visa, Microsoft, and United Healthcare and McDonald’s.
“This notion that earnings don’t matter, I’d like to debunk that because companies are beating earnings at an 80 percent clip,” Belski said.
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