Somebody asked me today, Wednesday, what I was doing. I told them I was scribbling my newspaper column. They said that was a waste of time because when you are reading this with your morning coffee on Sunday, all the numbers will be wrong.

You know what? He was right.

So, this is what we are going to do. I am giving you old numbers. What happened during the last days of February? It was pretty much carnage, so it makes a good story.

Those seven days or so were not good. The Standard and Poor's 500 fell 12.9452 percent from the high. Call it 13 percent. The Dow fell 14.0663 percent. Call it 14 percent. It isn't important to know anything else.

It's not unusual for the markets to fall 13 percent, I have seen it many times. What is unusual in the quickness of the descent. And it happened right at the end of February and so investors are going to get their February statements reflecting those lows.

Now having said that, by the time you read this those lows may have been broken. I have no clue. Anyway, you are not going to be happy.

As I have been communicating, in my view, there is nothing wrong with the markets. This is all about the coronavirus. If you couple that with recent news on the struggle that the Democrats are having identifying someone to run against Trump, no wonder the markets went down.

I knew, gut feeling, that something totally unrelated to the markets was going to drive the market down. I had communicated that exact thing to my investors. It's not that I am so bright, it just was the only thing that made sense if the market was going to weaken.

We have low interest rates, inflation under control and corporate profits are good. The stock market should be going up.

Most investors I talked to are holding tight. They know it is not the market.

They could be wrong of course; things could worsen. The problem is that many investors make really bad decisions when they are under pressure. Stress, if you will.

Do what you are going to do, but take your time, consider everything and then make your decision based on the best information you have. I can't tell you what to do. I don't know you and your particular financial situation. If you have some sort of adviser, you should be getting some sort of advice from them. If not, then maybe you need a new person to advise you.

The market was at a record high? Why didn't we sell?

Most of us are long-term investors and we realize it's probable that if coronavirus didn't come, maybe the markets would still be going up. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent financial guy, but I had no clue we were going to lose 14 percent.

Now again, as I write, the market has lost 7.95 percent year-to-date at that low. Call it 8 percent. This is not a horror story. Historically, markets seem to have done well after pullbacks like this. See me in a year.

OK, so what do I think?

Remember, this is my opinion and has no basis in fact. So far, using the best available information, the coronavirus is a very old virus. The problem is that this is a new strain. There are about a zillion pharmaceutical companies working on a virus treatment. I would tend to bet on them.

People die every day from viruses. It appears that 80 percent of the people today would react to the virus as they would a typical virus. Not pleasant, but recoverable. It seems that a majority of the people who have died from the virus had additional medical problems or were elderly and the virus would hit them harder. I'm no doctor, but this all makes senses to me. Just don't be silly and do things that would expose you. I would not travel to China right now.

My thought is that this too will pass. Hopefully, quickly and with fewer deaths, although as a percentage of the population so far it's been small.

My friend, Louie, went to the Doctor and he called me sobbing. I said, “What's wrong?” He said the doc told him he had a terminal illness and only had 9. Louie asked him 9 what? Years, months, weeks, days? The Doctor said “8.”

Howie Pentony is a Portersville client portfolio manager.