Don't panic, it'll settle - soon

Head for the hills - if you're not already up there. Everyone else is. The selling frenzy intensified yesterday as the Australian sharemarket closed in the red for the 12th consecutive day and bourses across the Asia-Pacific took massive whacks.
The local decline marks the biggest one-day fall in the benchmark index since 1997.
Brokers said panic selling was the order of the day but they were still expecting the market to stabilise some time soon.
"We've seen our market come back to levels that I think are too low … and fear of a recession in the US is more than reflected in share prices globally," Ausbil Dexia's head of equities, Paul Xiradis, said.
"There appears to be a lot of forced selling."
The ASX 200 index plummeted 393.6 points, or 7.05 per cent, to 5186.8 points.
It was the biggest one-day loss since October 28, 1997, when it shed 6.79 per cent.
But the broader All Ordinaries index was slashed by 408.9 points, or 7.26 per cent, to 5,222.
The decline was the largest since October 16, 1989, when the index fell 8.1 per cent. (On Black Tuesday, October 20, 1987, the All Ords were off 24.99 per cent.)
The weaker session also marks the local market's longest losing streak since January 1982.
With US markets closed overnight for Martin Luther King Day, investors were led by Europe, where all the major bourses fell and British stocks suffered the biggest one-day loss since September 11, 2001.
The Federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, told investors to calm down.
"I note we are well placed to ride out the turbulence that flows from events in the United States even though we are not immune from it," he said.
"The prospects for ongoing growth in Asia and the developing markets are assisting us to withstand the fallout occurring elsewhere."
Mr Xiradis said the local market should stabilise in the next few days, with "some sort of bounce back in the not too distant future".
James Packer's Consolidated Media was one of the few stocks spared from the selling, closing 37c, or 9.69 per cent, higher at $4.23, after the company received a $3.31 billion joint-venture takeover bid from Messrs Packer and Lachlan Murdoch on Monday.
Fairfax Media shed 23c, or 5.5 per cent, to $3.96, and News Corp fell $1.16 to $20.60.
The big miners were not exempt. Rio Tinto was down $13.25, or 11.6 per cent, to $101 even and rival BHP Billiton fell $2.29, or 6.9 per cent, to $31, its low for the day, on volume of 29.6 million shares.
Among the banks, the Commonwealth was down $1.93 to $48.85, NAB fell $2.30 to $32.90, Westpac was off $1.27 to $24.50 and ANZ was down $1.85 to $24.35. St George was $1.96 cheaper at $27.54.
The retail sector was also a sea of red. Wesfarmers was off $2 to $32.50, Woolworths was down $1.90 to $29.13 and David Jones fell 45c to $4.30.
Woodside Petroleum was off $4.53 to $40.97 and Oil Search was carted 77c, to $3.72.