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Chaos could also be a ladder, but where is it leading investors? Up, the dip buyers hope, making the most of Wall Street’s newfound pessimism with money and courage. The identical tariff uncertainty that has sent markets tumbling has created a feasting opportunity for those willing to go against the grain.

Bank of America equity strategists wrote on Tuesday that because the market entered correction territory last week, clients poured into US equities, targeting single stocks. Energy and tech were the sectors leading the inflow. And as strategists Jill Carey Hall and Nicolas Woods noted, more investments got here into cyclical sectors than defensive ones, suggesting that clients aren’t preparing for a recession.

“Timing a market bottom is hard, but recognizing patterns is more straightforward,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, in a note this week. “At once, contrarian signals remain one of the vital reliable trading patterns. Retail investors proceed to embrace a ‘buy the dip’ mindset, while institutional investors have been more reactive.”

But what do retail investors know that institutional ones don’t? Or quite, what are they willing to tolerate?

Share prices to the skeptical investor are only now reaching “normal” levels, with the market having just jettisoned probably the most extreme frothiness. A correction after all-time highs doesn’t mean stocks are low cost. And the swift drawdown and the character of the tariff-triggered sell-off have left some analysts expressing caution.

“The damage to longer-term breadth, lack of institutional participation, and defensive rotational pressures leave us cautious on buying the dip straight away,” wrote Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial.

And as a flood of absurd and darkly amusing memes on X and Instagram get at, what happens when the dip keeps on dipping?

The unraveling AI trade doesn’t yet have a transparent catalyst to rebound; growth concerns may soon change into crystallized in objective data; the Fed’s rate-cutting ability to guard growth will probably be hamstrung by pressure to counteract tariffs; and the tariff deadline next month is one other economic time bomb.

You do not have to succeed in for the metaphor of a falling knife to understand the issue of timing the underside. For the experts urging caution — that the market still has a ways to fall, or not less than that the environment is removed from being settled — there is a cluster of interconnected obstacles ahead.