The market is down.
My portfolio is down.
A lot.
An awful lot.
What should I do?
What do YOU think I should do????
What should I do NOW?

We have heard that a lot and we hear it a lot.

“What should I do?” is the wrong question.

And it’s asked at the wrong time.

While the general direction of the stock market, always irregular, is up, up, up, it has horrible falls all the time. Every five or seven or ten years it drops 10-30 percent. No one knows why. No one knows when. No one predicts them. And the usual after-the-fact analyses, while sometimes valid, are usually different and never fully convincingly explanatory, making them useless for future planning whether for the next day, week or year. The behavior of human beings and stock markets are mysterious. Whatever economic or financial unwisdom led to the last drop, new mistakes, new forces, new practices and new misconceptions exist to bring on the next one.

So the real question is not “What should I do NOW?”

The real question is “How can I structure my portfolio now so that when the next drop happens, whatever its cause, whatever its timing, I’m still okay, can survive it comfortably while waiting for the market to recover…as it always does”.

That’s exactly right.

The drops, falls, recessions, corrections, grizzly bear markets just happen.

So you must structure your portfolio (together with your life) so when things really go to pot, you’re OK and can ride it out with relative calm and ease…and minimal distress…and enjoy life when the recovery, the recovery that always comes back, comes roaring back.

How do you do that?

From the point of view of your personal finance, prudence, being reasonable, using common sense and being flexible in adjusting your life to the situation does the job. Too much debt, too much uncertainty, too much risk and too much inflexibility will set you up for weakness and distress. Positive actions are to have enough cash or other resources to be able to live your life in a reasonable if reduced way, avoiding unnecessary expenditure and stay realistically optimistic.

From the point of view of your investments, the 99 Minute Egg does the job for you in avoiding the casino, rigged, exploitative, chaotic, hyper-reactive and unreal lunatic parts of the market, for in the long run the “strong hands” will do well in the market, often at the expense of the “weak hands”.

Remember, no one…no economist, no financial adviser, no banker, no strategist, no futurologist, no politician…knows when the next major market drop will happen. So you should be set up to prosper in good times and survive well in bad ones, waiting comfortably for the good times to return.