When people see stock prices fall, they think they'll fall further. People go into a defense mode. They may buy bonds or other products perceived to be safer than stocks. So until about June of last year, most of my business was coming from stocks. Then when the market started going down, I started selling more bonds the last half of the year.
Customers like to wait and see what's going to happen.
That's human nature. When things get rocky, that's the reason people buy bonds. They're going to buy bonds because it's a known. Sometimes when stocks are going down it becomes a big unknown factor. They know they're going to pay interest and when they mature they're going to pay principal.