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STEUBENVILLE -- Volatility in the stock market during the past several days should not be a cause for jitters.
Ken Perkins, president and chief executive of Tri-State Financial Services, said despite the whipsawing on the market, the long term always remains positive.
"When the market goes as high as it has been, you're going to see some profit taking," Perkins said. "That's a lot of what you are seeing now. As an example, if you bought something at $10 per share and it went up to $14 a share, you probably want to sell that stock. So, yes, you see that whipsaw. And, the next day, you can rebuy the stock at a lower price. If you really loved it, it can turn around."
The market fell 10 percent from the record high set in January, with drops of 1,000 points twice during the past week in the Dow Jones Industrial Average before staging a late rally Friday, ending the week on a positive note.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 330 points, or 1.4 percent, to 24,190. Earlier in the day it had dropped by 500. The S&P 500 gained 38 points.
Still, the Dow and S&P 500 lost more than 5 percent for the week. Both indexes had their worst week since January 2016. The Dow recorded 1,000-point drops on Monday and Thursday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 1.5 percent, to close at 2,619. The Nasdaq rose 97 points, or 1.4 percent, to 6,874. Bond prices fell, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.85 percent.
Perkins said while his customers know they're in the market for the long term, there are people who hear a constant drumbeat of negative news about stocks and "freak out a bit."
"But the people who get hit most out of this are the ones who buy individual stocks as individuals. Mutual funds have money managers and they know the market will do an average of 8 percent to 10 percent on an average return," he said.
Perkins noted 2017 was the anomaly, with a 23 percent return for many investors. Long-term market averages usually rise 8 percent to 10 percent per year.
"I've kept a constant watch on this, and I've been doing this a long time. I remember that we had a party when the Dow hit 3,000," Perkins said.
He said the market cannot always rise, but over the long term, it does that 8 percent to 10 percent annual average gain. That said, Perkins emphasized that he expects to see the market come down in 2018 but end on a positive note.
"There are no buying opportunities when markets are constantly going up. You will see profit taking, money going out, but it will go back in as people buy again," he said.
"Unless you need all of your cash at one time, in which case you shouldn't be investing in the market with all of it, there is no need to freak out at this point. It's not as bad as what they make it sound like in the media."
U.S. stocks started to tumble after the Labor Department said workers' wages grew at a fast rate in January.
Investors worried rising wages will hurt corporate profits and could signal an increase in inflation that could prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at a faster pace, putting a brake on the economy.
On Wall Street, many companies that rose the most during the last year have borne the brunt of the selling. Facebook and Boeing have both fallen sharply.
In Washington, President Donald Trump signed a $400 billion budget deal Friday that sharply boosts spending and swells the federal deficit, ending a brief federal government shutdown.
The market, currently in its second-longest bull run of all time, had not seen a correction for two years, an unusually long time. Many market watchers have been predicting a pullback, saying stock prices have become too expensive relative to company earnings.
"We may have seen the worst, but it's too early to say for sure. However, our view remains that it's just another correction," said Shane Oliver of AMP Capital in a report.
Corrections of up to 15 percent "are normal," Oliver said.
"In the absence of recession, a deep bear market is unlikely," he said.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)