Jon Chevreau recently wrote about black humour doing the rounds in the wake of market turmoil of the past week. He published a Facebook post by Hugh Cameron, a publicist and screenwriter and a former mutual fund company insider:

Changed my financial plan. Out go stocks and bonds. In comes lottery tickets and working with that Nigerian prince who sent me an email asking me to help him move his money. (I send him $1,000 now, and he sends me $100,000 later! How awesome is that?)

It is a bit distressing to see investors behaving somewhat like this trader crying out the live S&P futures in this audio clip that is lately circulating via email. If investors step back a little, they will realize that that the market swoon so far (even before the strong rebound today) is not even a blip (yet) in the strong market rebound since March 2009. As long as an investor has a plan and a portfolio that implements the plan, it is not worth fretting over every little squiggle in their portfolio value.

[TSX Composite return. March 2009 to May 2010]

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