After hearing that comment, a friend sent me his own explanation. Unless the market doesn’t go down, it will go down. If it stays up, it will not have gone down. Unless it goes down later, which will only happen if it doesn’t stay up.

Such precise predictions are a part of the noisy industry of forecasters and gurus that’s grown up around investing. Sometimes, they get it right, at least temporarily. The S&P 500 did indeed fall below 1,950 and is around 1,900 as of this writing. But it would only need a 3 percent gain to be back above that level again, which could happen in just a couple of days.

With all of this noise comes hundreds of opportunities to rethink the good financial decisions we’ve already made. It’s so tempting to latch on to these predictions and believe they mean something. But unless something fundamental has changed in our lives, these so-called opportunities actually represent a huge cognitive drain and present a danger to our financial health.

Luckily, we have a choice. We can assess our options, understand to the best of our current knowledge the potential consequences and choose what to do.

I made a decision more than 20 years ago not to drink alcohol. It’s a completely personal choice, but once I made the decision, that was it for me. If I took the time to rethink that decision every time I was offered a drink, it would make it that much harder to stick with the decision that still represents the best choice for me.