If local money managers could whisper one word into their clients' ears this morning, it would be, "Relax." A second word may be, "Buy."

While yesterday's 416-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average made for exciting television, particularly a late-day plunge that saw the Dow off as much as 546 points, Carrie Coghill Kuntz said the correction was not a surprise.

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"People we have talked to say they have been expecting it," said the president of Downtown-based money manager D.B. Root & Co. "The pendulum always swings."

Ms. Kuntz said the market overreacted to the Chinese stock market's sell-off and, domestically, to yesterday's report that orders for big-ticket manufactured goods fell sharply in January. She and others noted that other economic reports, on consumer confidence and housing sales, were positive.

Charles Smith, principal and chief investment officer at Green Tree-based Fort Pitt Capital, referred to the precipitous late-day drop as "kind of a knee-jerk reaction to what's happening in Shanghai," home to China's stock market.

But he noted that even with Monday evening's sell-off in China, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index, a gauge of all stocks that trade on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, "is still up 4 percent for the year."

He saw no cause for concern in yesterday's activity. "The fundamentals in terms of inflation are good," Mr. Smith said, noting that both the price of gold and the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond also dropped yesterday.

"If we had seen signs that inflation is roaring and that earnings were going to collapse, I'd be concerned, but we're seeing neither of those," Mr. Smith said.

Rather than being a harbinger of doom, Malcolm Polley viewed the drop as beneficial.

"It's healthy for the market to correct like this," said the chief investment officer for Stewart Capital Advisors, the private wealth management arm of Indiana, Pa.-based S&T Bancorp.

"We haven't had a correction of this magnitude since, oh heavens, last summer,'' Mr. Polley said. "And we haven't had a 10 percent correction in 45 months."

Mr. Polley said a 10 percent correction -- the Dow Jones industrial average yesterday fell 3.29 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped 3.47 percent and the Nasdaq composite index dropped 3.86 percent -- would be "a healthy kind of cleansing correction. ... We look at these kinds of corrections as a buying opportunity."

Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at Downtown-based PNC Financial Services Group, agreed that it was hardly the time to panic.

"It's not the beginning of a prolonged, nasty decline in the stock market," he said. "I think it's a long overdue correction. Don't forget, we've had eight straight months of increases."

Going further, Mr. Hoffman also called the possibility of a recession "unlikely," saying the Federal Reserve had plenty of time to step in and lower interest rates if it became necessary to stimulate the economy.

He said he would view continued declines over the next few weeks or months as a buying opportunity.

"People have been saying if only stocks would come down a little, I'd buy them," Mr. Hoffman said. "Well, now's their chance."