Market volatility has been kicking into high gear this year. It seems like almost every day the indices are moving 1% or more, and lately a lot of that movement has been downward. Year-to-date the S&P 500 is down 5% and the NASDAQ is down nearly 10%, as of the writing of this article.

For many investors right now, the question keeping you up at night is whether or not you should stay invested in the market. The answer? Read on…

Let’s first try to understand what’s been going on with the markets in recent days. The best word I can use to describe it is “uncertainty”.

There are a ton of policies on the table right now at the highest levels of our government, and nobody is quite sure what’s going to happen. For example, tariffs. So far, tariffs have been threatened and, in some cases, initiated. We’ve seen some of those initiated tariffs quickly rescinded, delayed, or even expanded. Another example of this uncertainty is the federal budget. The Senate has one set of priorities, the House has another, and the Democrats have a completely different set of priorities. Your guess is as good as mine in terms of figuring out how that all plays out.

There are many other looming uncertainties beyond those two examples, but the point remains: we just don’t know what to expect. The stock market very much prefers predictability, and so stocks have become very volatile and headed south recently. But don’t jump to conclusions—if policies become clearer and more predictable, the markets could quickly settle down and even reverse course upwards.

The question of whether you should be selling right now is a bit more complicated and personal. If you think that you know when the market is going to hit its bottom and bounce back, good for you. Decades of evidence show that investors typically lose a lot of money trying to time the markets, so it’s not something I would recommend.

Instead consider your investment timeline. How long before you need to take some of your stock investments and sell them for living expenses? If you have 5 years before you need to pull any money out, what do you think is the likelihood that the markets will be higher in 5 years than they are today? Historically, stocks have gone up in 88% of 5-year periods since 1926, per the S&P Global. Are you comfortable taking that 12% risk that your portfolio could go down, against an 88% chance that it rises? Do you have a 10-year horizon? If you do, you should know that the markets have gone up in 95% of 10-year periods since 1926. I like those odds a lot!

If you are going to need to sell stock in the next year in order to finance your life expenses, most advisors would agree that you should have few or no equity holdings, because there’s a pretty decent chance that the market could be lower in a year, based on historical performance.

In the end, if you’re trying to figure out whether you should be selling off your portfolio right now, you need to consider the risks and the benefits. I can’t predict what happens next in the markets any better than I can tell you how much snow we’re going to get in March. What I can emphasize, as I have so many times in this newspaper column, is that you are best served by having an investment portfolio that is diversified, personalized, and built for the long haul. If a month or two of bad news has you thinking about selling, you should revisit your goals and holdings with your advisor to make sure that things are optimized for you and your situation.

However you choose to handle the uncertainty, invest smartly and invest well!

Larry Sidney is a Zephyr Cove-based Investment Advisor Representative. Information is found at https://palisadeinvestments.com/ or by calling 775-299-4600 x702. This is not a solicitation to buy or sell securities. Clients may hold positions mentioned in this article. Past Performance does not guarantee future results. Consult your financial advisor before purchasing any security.