By Clyde Noel

Stock Report

From a historical standpoint, stock market averages typically perform poorly after a major shock. The market has had a considerable period of time to digest the news and formulate plans to offset the early waves of selling when the market opened Monday, but it wound up with the greatest loss ever.

“The initial market sell-off was expected,” said Peter Leisenfeld, a Mountain View financial adviser. “The market volume is large and the Dow industrials volume is larger than the Nasdaqs, which is an unusual turnaround.

“Individuals are not selling, it’s the institutions who are heavy weighted on airlines, leisure and retail issues. Tomorrow, (Tuesday) will be the indicator. Who knows how long this will last,” Leisenfeld said.

Alexander Ng, a representative for Edward Jones said his firm had 21,000 trades by 10 a.m. (CST) and 70 percent were buys and 30 percent sell. On an average Monday at the same time the firm would have made 10,000 trades.

“As difficult as this period can be, now is not the time to abandon well thought out, long-term investment plans,” Ng said. ” For those fully invested, our message is to stay focused on long term goals and factors you can control such as the quality of the investment and the diversification of the portfolio.”

Americans need to brace themselves for more bad news. The shock waves could shake the economy and the financial markets for days and weeks to come.

Not all analysts are positive and many feel we could have a terrible Christmas and it could be another six months before things improve.