CENTRAL ILLINOIS (WCIA) — It’s been a tumultuous last week for U.S. investors. Market volatility and uncertainty came after President Trump’s unveiling of mass reciprocal tariffs on nearly 90 countries worldwide. And now, both the NASDAQ and Dow Jones have seen the unstable impacts of overall investor anxiety.

As weekend Wall Street downturns continue creating panic — investment professionals in Central Illinois are weighing in.

Their message between the two WCIA spoke with with remained consistent: They’re advising their clients to hold steady and not sell into the uncertainty. They also say that despite the current state of the market, it always smooths out with time.

“It’s not that extreme yet, but so much of the decline happened in two days last Thursday and Friday. So I think that got people’s attention,” said Daniel Holder, CEO of Holder Wealth Management.

Last week’s global tariffs created a several-day stretch of market panic for some U.S. investors, with major indexes falling hard amid fears that U.S. tariff policy could hurt economic growth, raise inflation, or even trigger a recession.

Now into this week, a majority of investors remain shaky.

“Obviously, I mean, it’s a little bit scary for our clients — for everyone — when they see the market decline somewhat rapidly,” said Vice President of Ruedi Wealth Management and financial advisor David Ruedi.

Ruedi said that his advice to his clients has been to control the controllable.

“One of the things we can control is our behavior,” Ruedi said. “So making sure we don’t panic in times like this, doing things like rebalancing client portfolios back to their target percentages, tax loss harvesting, potentially Roth conversions. But frankly, the most important thing is just providing that reassurance to clients that they often need in times like this.”

Holder’s advice for every market downturn has remained the same: don’t sell into the madness.

“Right now, all we have in the brokerage account is a paper loss; we don’t have any real losses,” he said. “When we sell, those losses become permanent, and it’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to recover them. Whereas if we hold them — if we hold steady — when the market rebounds, which it always has, there’s never been a permanent decline in the stock market — we’ll get back to where we were.”

And for different age brackets, the outlook changes.

“For young people, this is a good thing,” Ruedi said. “Just continue saving and investing. If you can, cut your spending a little bit so that you can save and invest even more. That’s a good thing. And then for retirees, just all of the things that I talked about: rebalancing, monitoring your plan, and just trying to stay calm, cool, and collected.”