Stock market coronavirus drop was painful, but buying opportunities may arise

The stock market corrected some 13 percent last week — a large move by any measure.

The impetus behind this sell-off is primarily China’s mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has now spread to numerous countries.

Infectious disease experts have said that while the virus is highly communicable, its mortality rate is very low when compared with SARS, bird flu and other recent nasty diseases circling the globe. The most susceptible are the elderly and those with impaired immune systems.

While I do think much of the selling in the market was triggered by the spread of the coronavirus, much of what made us so vulnerable is that we were extremely extended and overbought by almost every technical measure.

While it was painful to watch the decline, the good news is that bear markets, which are defined as much by duration as price drop, rarely start from all-time highs.

Instead of putting this sell-off in the proper context, most of the Wall Street doomsayers being paraded out by the media just feed the selling frenzy, leading to an outbreak of investor anxiety.

Heart-wrenching and scary as a global health crisis may be, let’s not lose sight of the fact that historically, times like these have always proven to be excellent buying opportunities.

It is important to remember that years after SARS, bird flu, MRSA and Ebola all wreaked havoc on the market, when they subsided the market marched to new highs each and every time.

So do yourselves a favor: Be smart with your health and wise with your wealth, because whether it’s two, five or 10 years from now, this will just be another page in the history of financial market turbulence that investors will likely look back at as a buying opportunity.