Some stock market perspective

[onenote]

As I type this, the Dow is at around 39,500.
Do you know what it was on January 20, 2021? 31,188.
That means that even with the current drop, the market still up by more than 25% from the start of Biden's presidency.
You know how recently the Dow was below 38,900? June 18 of this year. Then it recovered. Relatively quickly.

And for those who are attempting to draw a direct line between the Fed's actions, or inactions, and are assuming some nefarious plot is at work: consider that the Fed last increased rates July 26, 2023. The Dow dropped a couple of hundred points but recovered that loss in less than a week. By fits and starts, it did slowly drift downward in August and September, bottoming out below 33,000 on October 27, 2023 -- less than a year ago. Then, despite the Fed having declined to lower interest rates at its September, October/November and December meetings, by the end of the year it was approaching 38,000.

I don't know how low the Dow will go or how quickly it will recover. But I do know that I'm not panicking.