How should individual investors respond to the volatile markets?
How should individual investors respond to the volatile markets?
STEVE CHIOTAKIS: Jill Schlesinger is editor-at-large at CBS/MoneyWatch. She’s with us live from New York, as she is every Friday morning, talking about a big sell-off — and a rather positive jobs report. Good morning Jill.
JILL SCHLESINGER: Good morning.
CHIOTAKIS: So how does this employment report affect the volatile markets?
SCHLESINGER: Well, we did need a bit of good news to jolt us out of that panic induced selling from yesterday. But, you know, now we’re going to get to the big stuff. The investment community is going to ask two big questions: is the U.S. economy growing enough for companies to make money going forward, and will the European debt crisis be contained?
CHIOTAKIS: How should you and I and our audience, Jill, respond to this news? Give us your personal finance expert opinion.
SCHLESINGER: You know, I used to advise people for 15 years. I developed the nine steps to investor sanity — you can see it on MoneyWatch.com — the first three things. Take a deep breath, do not make a trade. Repeat step number one. You should not be doing much with your portfolio. You should have a well-diversified, balanced portfolio. That will see you through it. If you are panic stricken, you have too much risk in that portfolio and you’ve got to do something, but don’t do it in the middle of a washout.
CHIOTAKIS: I’m taking a deep breath now — do you think we’re heading into another recession? What’s going on with that?
SCHLESINGER: I’m too much of an optimist. I don’t think we’re going to head into another recession, unfortunately, for the 25 million unemployed or under-employed it really doesn’t matter. We still need to get these folks back to work. That’s the key.
CHIOTAKIS: Unemployment rate — 9.1 percent, still high.
SCHLESINGER: Too high, and too many people just not finding good jobs that they can get into and that actually will be the key to getting this recovery spread out across the United States.
CHIOTAKIS: Jill Schlesinger at CBS/MoneyWatch. Jill, have a great weekend.
SCHLESINGER: You, too.
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