Julie Sulser Stav, 44, a Calabasas financial planner who has set up more than 30 women's investment clubs, said she did not have to talk even one of the 1,000 women members out of selling. All of her investment clubs held their stock positions on Monday, convinced the fundamentals of those companies were still healthy, Stav said.
"I'm so proud of them," she said after fielding more than 100 calls Monday, compared to three or four on a normal day. "Nobody was crying on the phone. They kept saying: 'This is an intermediate correction, right? This is like having a little earthquake so we don't have the big one, right?' " Stav said.
Most of her members--who range from teenagers to grandmothers--joined these clubs during the boom of the last two or three years, so her clients had little or no experience with a massive nose dive. "It's a reality check," Stav said.
Even so, the lines were long at lunchtime at Charles Schwab & Co in downtown Los Angeles, with many investors leaving work to drop by to check on their stocks.
"I was having a wonderful lunch until I heard what happened," said Joan Jones, 40, who owns a combination of single stocks and mutual funds. "I'm not about to sell yet though."
"People say they are in it for the long term until there's a big downturn," said Mark Rastello, an investment specialist at Charles Schwab.
Or as Norma Lizaso put it, "I'm not selling--what comes down must go up."
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Vrana and Kaplan reported from Los Angeles and Mulligan from New York. Also contributing to this report were Jennifer Oldham in Los Angeles, Barry Stavro and Julia Scheeres in the San Fernando Valley, and Leslie Earnest and E. Scott Reckard in Orange County.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Historic Pause
Trading was halted for the first time, a safeguard used to slow steep declines.
2:35 EDT: Trading halted for 30 minutes
3:30 EDT: Trading closed early for day
Source: Bloomberg News
