Being in the present is always the best place to be. As human beings, however, we really enjoy spending so much of our time in the past – or, looking out into the future.

So, here is the question of the day “Should I sell”?

If I sell my portfolio it will have lost so much in value from just one year ago when the market was at 14,000. And, yet – if I wait, how much more could the market collapse? Heck, just yesterday it dropped 670 points to a 5 year low.

With such uncertainly, with GM and Ford stock prices dropping double digit percentages yesterday, Americans are scared and tentative. The stock market is one big emotive playground.  In good times, its one big love ride. When the “rescue plan” calls for bailing out various companies and industries to the tune of $2.3 million dollars per American (that is two point three million dollars per each person abiding, legally or illegally, in our country), the ride down is quick and fierce. The rollercoaster of life! 

So what do you do? Do what provides you comfort – in the NOW. No one has the answer to “what is the right thing to do with your investments” other than you. Of course, the natural thing to do is to calculate your losses. Or, like the eternal optimist that I am, do nothing, wait a few days or maybe a few weeks, and watch the market jump right back up 670 points in a single session. Me? I will not take a look at my statements until EOY. An ostrich? Perhaps! Or, I just don’t want to count my losses, as I have none if I don’t sell.  

What a time it is… will soon move onto “what a time it was”. The now, the present, will soon be the past. And in the meantime, who are you going to be in the face of fear, loss of jobs and income, uncertainty, and a very welcomed changing of the guard in Washington?

In the meantime, as Stevie Wonder so powerfully sang in his 1973 HIGHER GROUND....the "world keeps on moving" (or depending upon what politician you are listing to this week, it could be "mov'n"), the "world keeps spinning" (or, is in "spin'n?). Money comes and money goes, much like love comes and love goes. Hugh, Playboy's King, at 82,  split things off with his twenty something girlfriend the very same week that Howard Stern marries for the second time. The Pittsburgh Steelers upset the Jacksonville Jags on MNF. Blue chip IBM was up -- how about that for a silver lining? And the world just "keeps on turning".

Be in the Driver’s Seat,

Anne