Sharemarkets have been rocked around the world on investor fears of slower global economic growth and Ebola.
But with the local share market slowly crawling out of the basement in the past few days some experts are saying that - for the Australian market at least - it's not a crisis, just a minor setback.
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No one knows why it is, but history shows markets are usually volatile at this time of year, with some of the worst market crashes occurring during October.
Our sharemarket was one of the first major markets in the world to start falling. Australian share prices have tumbled the best part of 10 per cent since the start of September.
That was triggered mainly by selling of Australian shares by offshore investors to a falling Australian dollar.
But as is usual, the story is not really about our dollar, it is more to do with a US dollar that is rising against most currencies.
Offshore investors started selling their Australian shares because they did not want to have the losses from lower Australian share prices compounded by a lower Australian dollar.
More recently, however, the sell-off turned global over renewed fears of slower global economic growth and that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is not going to be contained.
However, it is the eurozone that is causing the most worry. There has been fall-off in German exports and they are fears that Europe's power-house may be skirting with recession.
Running behind all this is the long-term worries that central banks may remove stimulus before their sick economies are well enough to stand on their own legs.
As Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP Capital Investors describes it, large parts of the global economy have been induced into a "coma" by central banks since the GFC.
Interest rates in Europe and the US are near zero and, in America the dollar bill printing presses have been running, a process known technically as "quantitative easing".
But the medicine will have to be removed. The question that worries investors is whether the patient will be able get up from the hospital bed, unaided, after the stimulus is removed.
While the US is, once again, tapering its money printing program, the expectations of weaker global growth and volatility on sharemarkets will likely push out the day that interest rates around the world, including Australia, will start to rise.
The question investors will want answered is whether the falls are just a correction – the pause that refreshes — or the start of something nastier.
"My instinct tells me it is just a correction," Dr Oliver says.
Investors' memories of the bear market between 2008 and 2011 are still vivid, he said. Investors have not been "exuberant" as they were just before the GFC and have remained sceptical and cautious.
The Australian sharemarket is cheap, Dr Oliver says, and it looks as if markets could be building a floor, though the volatility is expected to continue, he says.
Michael Heffernan, a senior client adviser and economist at Lonsec sharebrokers regards the volatility as a "great opportunity" for shares investors.
"This is not 2008 through to 2011," he says.
"In my view there is no fundamental difference between now and six weeks ago," he says.
"Good stocks are down 7 or 8 per cent," he says. Telstra, for example, with its share price down to about $5.40, is a good opportunity, he says.
