NEW YORK -- Wall Street's recent decline has been an unsettling reminder of the three-year bear market, and with terrorism rattling investors, gas prices soaring and job creation stagnant, many observers worry that the correction is not over yet.

Even if it isn't, though, analysts say all this confusion may hold buying opportunities.

The market's latest volatility has been unnerving even for professional investors. A ferocious decline on Monday was followed by two days of sideways trading, and then a dazzling rebound erased nearly all the week's losses Thursday. After Friday's modest moves, only the Standard & Poor's 500 was fractionally lower for the week.

In the lull between quarterly earnings and without significant economic news, it's not surprising that the market should be a bit moody. But there are an unusual number of factors feeding the current volatility, including anxiety over when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, who will win the presidential election, and whether the outcome will change the present business-friendly climate.

"We're in a market that is going to be much more complicated and difficult, with bigger moves up and down, and that may persist even up to the election," said Woody Dorsey, president of Market Semiotics, a financial forecasting firm in Castleton, Vt.

Coming on the heels of a steady upward trek, all this change is making a lot of investors uncomfortable, said Dorsey, the author of "Behavioral Trading," a book that examines how investor confidence and expectations affect market trends.

How you deal with it depends on your own tolerance for risk. If you find the market confusing, it's perfectly all right to not to make additional investments at this point. If you're more aggressive, you can monitor the short-term declines for opportunities to put your money to work.

"You can be more of a picker and a chooser than part of the herd," Dorsey said. "The market is like Bloomingdale's. Two, three times a year, things go on sale, and that's when you buy. And why wouldn't you?"

If you're socking money away regularly in your retirement account, a strategy known as dollar-cost averaging, you might just want to tune out. "Don't look at financial TV all the day. Just don't," said Theodore L. Parrish, co-portfolio manager for the Henssler Equity Fund, a large blend based in Atlanta.

For a long-term investor, the correction should be "a nonevent," Parrish said. Buying high-value stocks at good prices, and sticking with your strategy, even when things don't appear to be going your way, is far more important than day-to-day volatility.

To screen out unproven stocks, the Henssler fund only buys companies that get an A rating for financial strength from Value Line and an A-minus or better for earnings and dividend quality from Standard & Poor's. Lately, Parrish has been looking for values in the health care and financial sectors, and he's even picked up a few tech shares.

"There are just a ton of companies that look decent in this market," Parrish said. "These are companies that are going to play on an expanding global economy, and they also have defensive qualities."

For the week
The Dow Jones industrials ended the week up 26.37, or 0.3 percent, finishing at 10,212.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 1.75, or 0.2 percent, to close at 1,108.06.

The Nasdaq rose 19.55, or 1.0 percent, for the week, closing Friday at 1,960.02.

The Russell 2000 index, which tracks smaller company stocks, closed the week up 2.18, or 0.4 percent higher, at 572.92.

The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, which tracks more than 5,000 U.S.-based companies, ended the week at 10,840.18, down 12.79 from the previous week. A year ago, the index was at 8,185.58.