After the Fall: Is the Market's Decline A Buying Opportunity Or a Troubling Omen? --- Stocks' 120-Point Plummet May Be Just a Correction; Some See a Further Drop --- Battered Banks and Biotech
NEW YORK -- Who's afraid of a Big Bad Crash?</br></br>Not Allen E. Moore. As assistant manager of the $4.25 billion Los Angeles Fire & Police Pension System, Mr. Moore says Friday's stunning 120.31-point, or 3.9%, drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average isn't a prelude to another Black Monday for the stock market today. Instead, it just makes his job a little easier.</br></br>"As long-term investors, you have to look at this and say, `Good, we get to buy more stocks now,'" he says.</br></br>The same goes for Evonne Hurst, an amateur investor in Milwaukee. She intends to buy stocks this morning. "I'm an investor, not a trader," she says. "A good company Friday is a good company Monday, only it's cheaper."</br></br>If investors such as Mr. Moore and Ms. Hurst are any indication, the stock market crash of October 1987 and another dramatic plunge in October 1989 have taught investors an apparent lesson: Panic selloffs are often opportunities, not obstacles, in successful investing. Mutual-fund group Fidelity Investments said that, over the weekend, customers were placing three times as many buy orders as sell orders in advance of Monday's market opening. And some of Wall Street's most respected gurus are urging investors to take advantage of what they believe is a temporary correction on the way to new highs.