“Communication is the key. Advisors need to be proactive and talk through this downturn one client at a time,” added Joyce, who deals mostly with retirees. “A lot of baby boomers are reaching 70 and a half years of age and are taking money out of the market” with required minimum distributions. “That piece of the market is bigger than you might think. But there is nothing out there that points to a big problem right now.”

“For advisors, this is an opportunity to sit down with clients and go over their reasons for investing,” said Brie Williams, head of practice management at State Street Global Advisors in Boston. “Emotions can get the better of us sometimes, but if client is self-aware about what their emotions are they can be disciplined in their investing.”

“Clients are looking for reassurance. This is a time to stay focused,” she added.

Clients also need to know a good run in the market cannot go on forever, noted Glenn Wiggle, an advisor with Peak Brokerage in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., “This was the longest run in history without a 5 percent rollback. The higher the market goes, the greater the correction is going to be.

“In the 2008 recession, there was a run to cash,” he said. “We are not seeing that now. But a lot of people took the profits they have been making out of the market earlier” to use, so the market lost that money. ... There is also some uncertainty with a new Federal Reserve chair and what he might do,” Wiggle added. “But there is a good jobs report and markets have done just fine in a rising interest rate environment. With those things in mind, we feel it is still going to be a good market for the next few years.”

Brian Kraus, head of investment consulting at Hartford Funds, said in a statement, “Pinpointing an actual cause to the change in sentiment can only truly be done in hindsight. Fear of rising rates and implications to bond and equity investments and unexpected upswing in inflation readings” are two.

However, “recent market activity is disconnected from underlying economic growth [because] we remain on solid footing from a growth perspective,” he said. 

James Ragan, director of individual investor group research at D.A. Davidson & Co. Wealth Management, with offices nationwide, agreed there is little to worry about now.

“When 2018 began with not just a continuation, but an acceleration of the equity rally, most indices became overbought and increasingly vulnerable to the sell-off we are seeing now,” Ragan said in a statement. “Given a substantial increase in U.S. interest rates since year-end 2017 and increased market volatility, we believe that last week’s weakness could continue over the near term.”

However, “in our opinion a 5 percent to 10 percent pullback in the S&P 500 should be considered normal and would not disrupt a secular bull market for equities,” Ragan said.