Spuds Powell: "Caused a very high level of fear"

Q: How did your clients react to the downturn?

A: Many of my clients are very seasoned professionals, business owners and executives. They’ve lived through many bear markets and downturns. But even though they’d been through it before, they were very worried, if not panicky. The culmination of Lehman going away, the stock market that October and the media painting a dire picture all caused a very high level of fear.

In other bear markets, if you had a diversified portfolio you could navigate through tough periods for equities. Virtually every asset class became correlated during the crisis. Everything was performing poorly. There was nowhere to hide. For some, it was the second time being burned in 10 years.

Slowly but surely, the emotion started to subside, and we were able to focus on trends that showed there was a slow recovery under way.

Spuds Powell

Los Angeles

— as told to Jason Kephart

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