Shares of Constellation Energy Group, which said that its sale to Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings is on track, lost $2.25, or 8.9 percent, to $23. Constellation this month agreed to sell itself for $26.50 a share amid the market turmoil.
"Without passage of this bill, people are basically sellers," said Douglas Schmidt, an investment banker and CEO of Chessiecap Securities in Bethesda. "They think there's uncertainty in the future and they'd rather be in something other than a stock."
The continued bad news created more uncertainty among investors who lit up phone lines at the offices of local financial investors and brokers.
"People have been a little bit on edge, not so bad yet, I've found," said John Bacci, president of Foundation Financial Advisors in Linthicum. "I don't think people have fully digested this one. The first tendency people have when they're nervous is to sell and get back in when things improve, and that's generally a mistake. The re-entry point is so difficult. If and when this thing comes back, it will likely be very quick."
Clients are "appropriately anxious," but not panicked, said Stuart Ritter, a certified financial planner with T. Rowe Price in Baltimore. "People are calling more for reassurance at this point."
In many cases, clients should stick to their long-term plans, planners said.
"When things happen in the market, it's uncomfortable," Ritter said. "If you have a short time horizon, you shouldn't be in the market. If you have a longer time horizon, it's not about what the market did today, it's where it's going to be in 10 or 20 years. There's nothing you can do about the decline that's already occurred, so making changes doesn't take away what's already happened, but it does take away whatever increase might happen in the future."
Investors at Baltimore-Washington Financial Advisors Inc. didn't get calls yesterday, but said they've been hearing from worried investors for weeks now.
"We've been telling them that this is going to be a market recovery that is going to occur very slowly over a long period of time with many fits and starts," said Saxon Birdsong, CEO and chief investment officer at Baltimore-Washington Financial Advisors. "We will not wake up in the near term and find out everything is okay. It's just going to take time to work through the problems."
Bacci said that especially vulnerable investors include retirees drawing incomes on a monthly basis and people with unreasonably high levels of debt.
