Why, exactly, are people losing their minds over this correction?

Remind me again why there is all the angst about this correction? This is the first one where I have not even looked up from my desk.  I remember, of course, standing agape, slackjawed, staring at something like what unfolded on the television screens in 1987, and I also realize that "On a percentage basis, the change in the VIX [this correction] was the single greatest increase over the last eleven years." But still, really, cmon where is the perspective.  Here, look at a monthly chart of the SPY over the last 15 years...

1. We haven't even returned to the 12 month moving average,

2. We have not broken the bigger trend,

3. We blew out of and exhausted the top of a channel (if you believe in channels) but haven't really even re-entered the core channel.  We did not lose money, by the way.  We had money last month that we probably shouldn't have had and had not really earned. We should never have even registered the idea in our head,

4. If you had told me in March of 2009 -- and I can still almost literally feel the nausea of the final free-fall flush down that quarter because I was in the middle of a move, a divorce and a retirement -- that we would be where we are EVEN AFTER THIS CORRECTION, I would have kissed you on the lips. 8% compound from the bottom (if I got that right and that would have been a lovely enough return all by itself...and closer to long term expectations than 16%) would have been something like 137 not the 266 I just saw. We should all be cheering rather than weeping and gnashing our teeth,

5. The american economy, as a trading partner used to tell me, is not going out of business and even if it were, you'd have bigger issues than emotionally processing a minor correction -- like where to get water, canned food, and ammo.   We are a tiny bit far away from that type of thing. 

Call me when we break the trend.