@Stacks - Reality bites. It's the nature of the beast!
There's bound to be peaks and troughs in the stock market. Maybe it's a natural progression; market correction or could even be the coming of age of a stock market to experience a crash. Every major economy has at one time or another experienced a crash be it due to the depression or inflation etc. While this could be a major or minor crash, the beauty of it is that there is always a recovery. Some recoveries may take longer than others but in the long run, there is an upward market trend before yep..., another crash.
The other thing to consider is that stock market crashes also present opportunities to buy into companies at a big discount depending on how bad the crash was. So it's not all doom and gloom.
The fear/knowledge/expectation of a crash should help you shape your investment goals in some ways. Although I haven't done so yet, I have to review my portfolio to ensure that my major holdings are in strong solid companies that may not give me the instant 1000% return but will not cause me to go bankrupt in a crash either. All my speculative trading will be done with a low percentage of my funds. Hopefully, that should cushion any fall and not leave me over exposed to volatile stocks.
As someone said to me, it's not a question of if but when it will happen on the
NSE. We just have to position ourselves in the next couple of years to prepare for the worst.
Those that have crystal balls in the house, please tell us what you see...