I remember April 14, 2000. I was in my second year of business school, and it was only weeks before graduation; we were coasting to the end. I came out of my negotiations class and there was an almost visible buzz. Everyone was clustered around a TV monitor turned to CNBC. The NASDAQ was crashing, and the DJIA was dropping, 400 points, 500 points. It ended down 617 points, a record at the time, and with the terrific sell-off in tech stocks many of my classmates' day trading careers were coming to a terrible close. The mood was somber, indeed, and we all went home and clutched our already-confirmed job offers close to our hearts.

While the bear market continued for several years and many of my friends' dotcoms went under before they'd even found the best place to order pizza, somehow the ensuing months of depressed indices and falling averages felt more like the natural cycle of life; as if spring 2000 had been a huge earthquake and the next few years were aftershocks, mudslides, traffic jams. Difficult but not catastrophic. In the meantime, my portfolio stuffed with value picks was fine (but my dotcom, too, went bankrupt -- fortunately, several months after I quit, rendering my never-exercised options worthless).

Today, the market is down again. In lulls in meetings my colleagues check their Treos and report. Down 300. Down 400. As I finish a one-on-one confab, I hear: Down over 500 points. And I say, "it's not that big a deal." The DJIA was in record territory. A few months ago we whispered about record gains between meetings, we IM-ed each other with updates. Could it hit 12,000? It did, and kept on zooming up, up, record after record.

A 500-point drop today is nothing, not an earthquake from which to rebuild but more like a loud, spectacular thunderstorm that causes little damage. Full of sound and fury. Signifying: not much.