INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Wall Street’s whipsaw week has even veteran financial insiders weary and wary, but a local expert urges keeping calm in the chaos.

“People are a little bit nervous. They also are a little bit fearful,” said Joe Fitter in an interview with WISH-TV’s Daybreak. Fitter is the director of the Strategic Finance Academy at IU Kelley School of Business.

Fitter has watched countless trading cycles over his career. He acknowledges that the swings of the last week can be unsettling, but he points out that even steep market drops are not entirely unexpected. He points out that U.S. stocks have been on a longer winning streak than what is historically normal, skipping semi-regular 10% drops.

“We call that a correction,” he says. “(Usually) about once every 18 or 19 months. And we are now in the 28th or 29th month (since) that happened. So we’re well overdue for a market correction.”

News 8 anchor Scott Sander also asked Fitter about the dramatic start to the week, when Japan’s Nikkei index saw a single-day drop of more than 11%, followed by a nearly full recovery the next day.

“This is a relatively isolated case. We’re not seeing contagion around the world. We’re not seeing contagion today from Japan elsewhere.”

Fitter also acknowledged the urge to sell can be strong when share prices are decreasing, but he cautioned against such quick reactions, especially in long-term investments like 401ks.

“Keep on keeping on is really the story. Oftentimes in financial markets, we say it’s ‘Time in the market’ -meaning your money stays invested- rather than trying to ‘Time the market’. None of us have a crystal ball and know what the market is going to do from one day to the next.”

Fitter also weighed in on whether the Federal Reserve should issue an emergency interest rate cut, as some have suggested. He framed his answer with the Fed’s twin mandates of keeping inflation low and employment high.

“And we’re not there yet where we’ve got inflation to their target level of 2%. We’re also not there where we’ve got unemployment, which is their other mandate above 5%. So really, they’re in a safe zone here. They’re watching the economy closely. They do see the consumer weakening. If you look at McDonald’s or Starbucks reports that came out, they’re a little bit soft,” Fitter said. “The carmakers are building inventory with automobiles. So things are slowing down. At the same time, the economy is nowhere near a recession, level of job cuts, or companies going out of business. So I think they probably going to do the right thing and not cut interest rates until it’s time.”