As the markets caught the Chinese flu on Monday morning, financial advisors were calmer than the Dalai Lama. The mood was captured in a morning alert from Naples, Fla.-based Capital Wealth Planning which said, “We’ve been down here before.”

After news from Asia and elsewhere around the world sank futures, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 1,000 points in trading just after the opening bell, only to gradually recover most of those losses throughout the morning.

Advisors seem to have taken the news in stride, but any time the Dow is down four digits just after the opening bell, nerves are tested.

“Our analysts have been up since midnight,” says Mike Smith, president of Houston-based STA Wealth Management. “I think everyone has been white knuckled. I was looking at the futures this morning and I eventually had to turn off the TV. The big message is still ‘don’t panic.’”

Far from panicking, Andy Kapyrin, director of research at Morristown, N.J.-based RegentAtlantic, said the decline should have been expected.

“I believe that this decline is a healthy correction,” Kapyrin says. “It was easy for the market to latch onto negative news from China this year because corporate earnings growth was flat.”

At HoustonFirst Financial Group, President Christopher Hensley says investors are well insulated from downturns.

“I use actively managed rules based on investment style, and part of that system is deciding once a month if we should be invested in an asset class or not,” Hensley says. “When we have corrections, we reach out to clients to remind them that we have rules in place that put us in a more defensive position automatically.”

The Chinese economic slowdown may be one of the immediate causes of the current market drop, but the market always responds, at least temporarily, to uncertainty by re-pricing lower, says Lane M. Jones, chief investment officer for Evensky & Katz/Foldes Financial Wealth Management in Texas and Florida.

In a memo sent to clients Monday morning, Jones says the financial media is always looking for a single cause for a market decline but, in fact, declines happen frequently. Meanwhile, portfolios are designed for years, not days.

“After an extended bull run, many investors forget that it is normal for stock markets to periodically see intra-year declines in the 5 percent to 10 percent range. Five percent declines happen, on average, four times per year with an average recovery period of two to three months,” Lane says. “Ten percent declines happen on average once per year with an average recovery period of eight months. If your investment time horizon is in excess of 10 years like most of our clients, the odds of losing money in a diversified portfolio are extremely low.”

Bill McNabb, chairman and CEO of Vanguard, also urges advisors to tell their investors to be calm. “Often, the wisest thing to do during periods of extreme market volatility is to stick with the investment plan that you've already devised. “Equity markets have reaped sizable gains over the past six years. Such setbacks, while unnerving, are inevitable.”

A "do nothing" prescription might be tough to swallow if you've been caught off-guard by recent volatility. But McNabb points out that no action is an active decision, and can be the right decision for reaching long-term financial goals.

Mitch Caplan, CEO of Jefferson National Advisors said the downturn in U.S. markets is more likely a symptom of globalization, not a sign of weakness at home.

"It's clear that when you look outside the U.S., markets are pretty spotty," Caplan says. "The bright and shining star has to be a U.S.-based recovery, but the question is whether that can lead to a global recovery. We're in a world where the media is real time, seven days a week. You can log on at any point and get a commentary on what's happening. Today it was compounding what you saw in China, Europe and the Middle East, there was probably some panicked selling after the opening bell, and the Dow was down 1,000 points for a brief moment."

Smith says STA Wealth Management is convincing clients to holster their itchy trigger fingers.

“On days like today, you become as much of a psychologist as a money manager,” Smith says. “People start reacting emotionally.”

Caplan said that advisors’ first task is to parse the downturn to clients.

“We started to reach out to our advisors over the last week to get a sense of their pulse,” Caplan says. “What we’ve heard pretty consistently is that they felt confident in their ability to communicate with a client.”

Mariann Montagne, senior investment analyst at Gradient Investments in Arden Hills, Minn., says Gradient’s advisors are doing a lot of handholding for panicked clients since Friday.

“But we are advising clients to look for opportunities to buy as the market is in fluctuation,” Montagne says. “We are also encouraging advisors to communicate with clients. Clients are looking for income and long-term growth; this is no time to change their priorities and panic.”

Gradient Investments, which has $850 million in AUM, anticipated this year would be a flat market. “We thought the market was pretty fairly valued since the first of the year," Montagne says. "Even in up years, you get corrections like this, so this is not showing the markets are collapsing.”

Hensley, too, has started to receive nervous inquiries about the market’s health — but not from clients.

“I have however gotten questions from friends and family worried about the volatility,” Hensley says. “I have always said that if your grandmother or uncle starts asking you about something, pay attention, because that means everybody is concerned.”

If anything, Smith, at STA Wealth Management, was surprised by the calm on Monday.

“Even our high-strung clients seem more calm than usual,” Smith says. “I’ve had a huge swell of communications, but they want to know what we’re going to do next, what our plans are.”

That calm may be the result of wise risk management. Ahead of the downturn, Smith had already prepared STA’s portfolios.

“We’ve been de-risking since March,” Smith says. “Right now, we’re around 25 percent cash, we’ve found some asset classes with low-or-no correlation to the market.”

At Capital Wealth Planning, portfolio manager Kevin Simpson reports taking similar measures.

“Because we run our portfolios on a strict risk-measured allocation where risk is kept within a defined range, we expect to use any panic as an opportunity to actually add to our equity holdings,” Simpson writes. “Last Monday, we did the opposite and added to our hedged position in advance of the landslide.”

Caplan says Jefferson National’s advisors were also confident in their preparation.

“We’ve heard some advisors say that they felt correctly positioned and were reaffirming to clients the need to stay the course,” Caplan says. “Others said that this was going to be a purchase opportunity, to that end we’ve seen an increase in cash positions like money markets over the past several weeks.

“Most interesting was that advisors felt like this was their time to shine and prove the value that they bring to their clients.”

For example, Caplan says, investors who completely self-direct or use robo-advisory services with no human component could have suffered from a lack of guidance during Monday’s sell-off.

“If you are using a robo-advisor, you probably didn’t get a message from them saying not to panic this morning,” Caplan says. “I’m a big believer in technology, but you can’t replace human capital.”

While Smith believes that Monday’s declines may be a five-to-ten percent market correction, he also says the drop needs to be put in perspective.

“We haven’t had a 10 percent correction in over six years, and it’s been since 2011 since we’ve had a five percent correction,” Smith says. “When it’s been this long, everyone overreacts. We need to see this type of volatility. Markets are going back to being markets.”

At Houston First Financial Group, Hensley says that a little anxiety is natural.

“We have had quite a run over the last few years, and in my opinion we’re overdue for a significant correction in the market,” Hensley says. “The truth is that nobody knows for sure when that will be. I never speculate on what the market will do, I let the market tell me what it is doing.”

Now is an ideal time to revisit portfolio allocations and optimize.

“Anyone who looks at their portfolio and isn’t happy with the performance, this is your chance,” Smith says. “We’re identifying additional candidates to sell, but the last thing you want to do is join the party and sell on the drop.”

Kapyrin, at RegentAtlantic, says conditions are still right for investors to buy into the market.

“I think investors should buy into this decline, as the economic and corporate fundamentals are still very sound,” Kapyrin says. “This may be an especially good opportunity to rebalance in emerging markets.”

Diane Pearson, an advisor with Legend Financial Financial Advisor Inc. in Pittsburgh agrees now is a time to buy and rebalance.

“Thiings are going to remain choppy for awhile but a diversified portfolio will be okay. For the rest of the year, portfolios should be hedged against international investments,” she says.

Mark Kemp of Kemp Harvest Financial in Harleysville, Pa., says he has been getting more panicked calls from other advisors asking what he is telling clients, than he has from clients. Clients will call when they get their quarterly statements and see they are not immune to the downturn. That is when he reassure them they are okay.

“If they have a rainy day fund and a source of retirement income or are far enough away from retirement to have some time, now is a perfect time to buy,” says Kemp.

And during the bumpy ride, advisors can serve as a Zen influence on investors, Hensley says.

“There are clients out there that will have these fears but won't even pick up the phone to ask you about them,” Hensley says. “It is important as an advisor to pick up the phone and speak to this fear.”