There were three types of investor Thursday when the Nasdaq had a surprise shutdown that lasted for about three hours in the afternoon.

There were the folks who were completely oblivious, the ones who were freaking out, and the group that was hoping it would all get blamed on a dead squirrel.

Glitch halts Nasdaq trading, and more

The sudden shutdown of Nasdaq — without any warning or explanation of what was happening — caught everyone by surprise, but it was over or nearly over by the time a lot of investors and money managers became aware of it. It freaked out systems — no bids and offers had options traders wondering if they were rich or broke until they realized what was happening — and traders, but it didn’t have the impact of a Flash Crash or even a rate hint tossed out by the Federal Reserve.

That may have been summed up by the expert on CNBC who noted that the shutdown was affecting “millions or thousands of people.”

The group truly impacted by the day’s events was more likely the small number. The legendary Warren Buffett has long suggested that investors should have a portfolio where they would feel comfortable if the market shut down for five years; if you couldn’t sit tight with a piece of the broad market shut down for a few hours, you’re either a trader or you have the wrong portfolio.

Veteran investors have seen this before, in many different forms; that’s where the dead squirrels come in.

In 1987 and 1994, the Nasdaq was shut down on two occasions when squirrels got a little too adventurous on power lines, forcing a fast flameout on trading until the power grid could be restarted.

It’s going to take the Securities & Exchange Commission days to figure out what happened and months to tell us about it, but don’t bet on the squirrels.

Instead, look at this kind of sudden “black squirrel event” — which would have created a full-blown media frenzy had it happened in panicky October instead of sleepy August — and consider what your reaction to it says about you as an investor.

Let’s not overplay this case. It’s not anywhere close to a market-meltdown event. The New York Stock Exchange was still open, there was still a lot of market activity, and while the lack of information was frustrating, it also kept most people from over-reacting. If this proves to be some sort of hacking problem or other issue with a long-lasting impact, no one knew it while it was occurring.

Truthfully, average investors — the ones who found out about the Nasdaq shutdown well after it had begun — typically come through an event like this one unaffected. They’re not watching the market moment-by-moment, so they’re not trading into right-now news.

Oh, they’ll hear that an event like this can affect their exchange-traded funds — funds that continued trading during the shutdown, even as the Nasdaq components of the portfolio were frozen — but they won’t notice any impact come Monday and the whole thing will be forgotten long before the investor goes to cash out the position.

Traders and market sharpies, by comparison, find that any uncertainty is their worst nightmare. They were scared of what the shutdown meant, but equally scared of how the re-opening would play out. They pulled out their hair by the fistful Thursday afternoon, but their real concern was that things could get much more hairy if this kind of thing happens during a heavy-volume or big-news day.

Even as they breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear trading would resume, they lamented how this could have been a much bigger deal.

Truthfully, however, virtually all investors should have been wishing for squirrels.

That’s because events like this are predictably unpredictable. We know they are going to happen; we just don’t know when.

They mostly get blamed on glitches, on unusual trading activities, on market anomalies, but they all look suspiciously like the kind of thing that can trigger a market quake on the magnitude of the financial crisis of 2008, and they are stunningly hard to accept sitting down.

While the talking heads on the financial channels were saying things like “Investors have lived through this kind of stuff before,” and that people “accept that these things happen,” they were ignoring the fact that the United States is not an emerging or frontier market. Orderly markets are imperative here.

Short of the occasional squirrel or the massive world event, a market shutting down for some glitch or some gamesmanship or anything else that puts the delicate balance in question is a real problem.

It makes investors wonder “Is the market broken? If I can’t tell, should I trust it?”

Pedestrians pass in front of the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013. Computer errors shook American equity markets again today as malfunctioning software that feeds data between exchanges prompted Nasdaq Stock Market to halt trading in stocks and options. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg Bloomberg

For most investors, events that can get you glued to daily market action should make them focus on what could happen on Wall Street that would actually make them alter their investment strategy.

Think of this as a test, the investment equivalent of a three-hour beep for the Emergency Broadcast System. If it had been a real emergency, you would have been able to tell the difference.

But if the specter of this kind of market test makes you nervous and has you thinking of what you might do the next time there’s a glitch, a meltdown, bad news or a hungry squirrel, then maybe it’s time to prepare yourself for the market’s real test.

That doesn’t happen over any specific afternoon, no matter how much angst Wall Street has, but over years and decades.

Long-term investors should be embracing Buffett’s concept of building a portfolio they’d want to have if the market shut down for years; if you couldn’t withstand a few minutes without getting nervous, it’s only a matter of time before you let one of these market tests undermine your strategy. See also: U.S. stocks get boost as Nasdaq restarts trade