As the stock market went into free fall Thursday—with the severe selloff continuing so far into Friday—advisors around the country spent the day on phone calls and in email chains with clients in an attempt to calm nerves, discuss strategy and serve as sounding boards for clients worried about their investment portfolios.
“While I spoke with many clients today, almost every call started the same: ‘I know this is the thousandth call or text you’ve received today,’” said Dann Ryan, managing partner at New York-based Sincerus Advisory. “There is a sense of awareness that others are experiencing the same, a sense of affirmation because they anticipated this and a sense of dread that it will likely get worse.”
Ryan said being “in the trenches” was an apt description for many advisors’ experiences on April 3, “a day when your cell phone dies because you’ve been talking on it all day and you realize at 6 p.m. that you forgot to eat lunch.”
The market drop came the day after President Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden with oversized charts detailing, country by country, the most aggressive U.S. tariff strategy since the early 1900s. The tariff announcement was more aggressive than the markets expected. It is also subject to change at a moment’s notice as the administration negotiates with countries on its path to try and bring more manufacturing back to America.
Brett Amendola, managing partner and wealth manager at New Haven, Conn.-based Wooster Square, said his firm took a proactive approach with clients and continued outbound calls it had been making since the start of the Trump administration. Yesterday, he also had a higher-than-usual volume of inbounds.
“The common theme from clients was, ‘How far can this go, and how long can it last?’” Amendola said. “My first answer, which I generally use for the markets, is that it can always go up more than you think, but can always go down more than you think, too.”
Amendola is preaching patience as the tariff-related drop plays out. He notes that this market decline is not based on the usual suspects—lackluster corporate earnings, job losses or central bank moves.
“There’s no way to know, right now, how low this can go, so the important thing is not to trade on emotion,” Amendola said. “I tell people, ‘It will last until the next catalyst. The good news is, we’ve been here before, and we’ve been successful at managing through it.”
Nora Yousif, senior vice president and financial advisor of the Empower House Financial Group at RBC Wealth Management, said she saw higher call volumes from clients yesterday as they responded to headlines.
“The noise level is loud out there right now,” Yousif said, noting that she started getting such calls when the tariff talk started in March. “We had primed our clients for this possible volatility, so mostly they were checking in and making sure things were okay.”
Beyond just getting a gut check that their strategies are still good, clients asked Yousif how bad things might get. In that case, she reminds them that it always feels like “unprecedented times,” but that downturns are normal occurrences in the market cycle.
“The most important thing that we remind clients of is that we’re in the right kind of allocation and that it is sustainable through this and many other volatile periods to come,” she said.
Plugging In
Samuel Diarbakerly, founder and CEO of Generation Capital Advisors, an Integrated Partners RIA, said many of his first-generation, high-net-worth clients have experienced market downturns and don’t need as much direct communication. However, he and his team make a point of calling second and third-generation clients who may be inheriting wealth.
“These people are plugged in, they are concerned and they have the most number of questions,” he said. “Not every advisor will call a 27-year-old with a $300,000 portfolio. But we care about these clients and want to let them know what we are doing (both with their accounts and their parents) and that it will be okay.”
One thing Diarbakerly’s firm is doing is buying into equities to take advantage of the low prices, saying it is a “good opportunity to sprinkle into high-quality names.” He said the firm is long-term bullish on the market and avoids the trap of thinking, “this time it’s different,” which he called the “most dangerous words in investing.”
Diarbarkerly also said some clients are seeing the value of diversifying into private markets and alternatives due to the drop in equities.
“One client I spoke with mentioned that all the things we had been doing to sell out of stocks and move into privates were working—when they logged in, they noticed it wasn’t that bad,” he said.
Ted Halpern, senior managing director at MAI Capital Management who is based in Ashburn, Virginia, said most of his clients are well-seasoned in market drops. Still, even he got a handful of calls and emails.
Halpern said he emphasized the normalcy of market drops and noted that, historically, seven of the 10 best days the market has ever seen were in bear markets.
“It reminds you that in the midst of the worst of things, you get these snap-back days,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet, but if you’re not part of those big snap-back days, you only absorb losses. Basically, the only way out is through, and I think that’s where we are at this point.”
Bedside Manner
Halpern the current market is an opportunity to make positive moves, particularly by shifting positions for tax loss harvesting purposes.
Meanwhile, he won’t be surprised if clients call or email with concern.
“I honestly view it as this is the time when our clients need us,” he said. “I like my doctor, but don’t go to him until I’m sick. I think this is when advisors or brokers have to be proactive, not just with the portfolio, not just with the tax loss harvesting, but with the communication.”
As of Friday afternoon, it seems likely that the patients will keep calling. As of about 2 p.m. E.T., the Nasdaq was down 4.7%, the S&P 500 4.8% and the Dow off by 4.3%. Yields on 10-year treasuries were around 3.99%, and the VIX, which measures volatility, was up another 34.5% to a reading over 40, its highest level since the height of the COVID crisis in 2020.
Meanwhile, Wooster Square CEO Amendola said he would not lose sight of the other important things in clients’ lives.
On the afternoon of April 4, he saw on social media that a client had landed his first hole-in-one on the golf course. In Amendola’s roster of calls regarding the market decline that day, he started out that one a little bit differently.
“My client said to me, ‘I guess you’re calling about the market.’ I said, ‘No, I’m calling about your hole-in-one,’” Amendola said. “Then, after we enjoyed that moment, we got into the market discussion.”
