Voices

Their Glass Is Half Full:

“This is a correction that has been long overdue. The time to get out isn’t when the stocks are down. I’ll ride it out.”

Steve Goldberg

33-year-old attorney in New York

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“I’m not ready to can it, certainly not ready to jump out any window. What other choices are there but to stay in?”

Houston Bolles

Paralegal in Portland, Ore.

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“I just feel over the long term things will get better. If things go down, I’ll keep buying as long as I have the money.”

Marvin Rosengart

Jeweler from Oradell, N.J.

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“We are not retiring for 20 years, so I am just going to let our money sit and keep up with our monthly contributions. I am hoping that this money will be buying cheap shares, and the market will go back up later.”

Michael Velez

School administrator from Orange County

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“This trading is being done at the margin by big hedge funds and people managing the proprietary books of investment banks. The retail investor isn’t selling. This is not a move by pension funds. Among our clients, there is not a panic.”

John Serhant

Chairman of the investment committee at State Street Global Advisers

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“These corrections tend to look like little blips in the general upward trend, and I guess that’s what I would expect. Over the next few years, we’ll do fine. . . . The U.S. economy is still in very good shape.”

Stephen L. Brown

Chairman and chief executive of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance

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“This is mindless selling that usually presents opportunities. . . . You have to look at a Chase, Citicorp, NationsBank, Travelers.”

J. Thomas Madden

Chief investment officer at Federated Investors

Their Glass Is Half Empty:

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Their Glass Is Half Empty:

“The market has knocked some of the Internet fairy dust off of these stocks. And they’re probably still overvalued.”

Jim Balderston

Analyst at Zona Research

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“If exuberance is when investors perceive there’s no ceiling for stocks, capitulation is when they see no floor--we’re close to that.”

Ned Riley

Chief investment officer at BankBoston

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“Investors are treating equities like nuclear waste.”

Ashok Kumar

Technology analyst at Piper Jaffray

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“It’s not just faraway places but our neighbors like Canada and Mexico. Everywhere you go around the globe there is a negative story.”

Robert Bissell

President and chief investment officer, Wells Capital Management

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“I’m worried. I’ve lost so much. When I buy, it goes down. When I buy again, it goes down again.”

Kazuomi Kobayashi

Tokyo barber

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“I’d appreciate if anyone [holding] Amazon.com would answer a question of mine: Does being crushed this badly in the market physically hurt, or is the pain all mental?”

Posting by “First 99”

Yahoo message board

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“We were thinking about putting an addition on the house and getting the house painted. I’m not sure I want to do it now. It’s pretty depressing.”

Ronald L. Rembert

Mechanic from Long Beach