Monday was not a good start to the week on Wall Street with the major equity averages taking a massive tumble, but one financial expert is urging you not to read too much into it.

The Dow Jones Industrial finished down over 1,000 points by the end of trading on Monday. The Nasdaq was off 576 points and the S&P 500 was down 160 points. The sell-off was triggered by last week’s jobs report which indicated fewer jobs added to the economy than expected along with a higher unemployment rate.

“I wouldn’t panic,” said Joe Fitter, a professor of finance at Indiana University. “That’s really the key message. Don’t go out and sell your 401K. Maybe don’t look a it because you’ll be upset, but this is no reason to panic sell.”

Fitter said several factors played into the sell-off, including some residual healing from the strain the economy felt during the COVID pandemic. He said the past three to five years have been “unusual” for the economy and it takes a long time for the economy to work through that.

Secondly, Fitter said Monday was a run-of-the-mill market correction.

“A normal stock market will go through one of these 10-percent corrections every 18 to 24 months,” he said. “When was the last time we had a correction? About 18 to 24 months. So it’s pretty much on schedule.”

These corrections happen in order to ensure the economy does not grow too fast too quickly and that every once in a while the stock market has to “come back down to Earth.”

Fitter views the correction as an opportunity since stock prices are now ten-percent cheaper than they were before. He advises that if you are one to play the market a bit, that you buy back into some stocks.