Professional brokers say small investors have proven remarkably resilient during the stock market's recent drop and volatility even as the market's main barometer, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, moves toward a 10-per cent decline from its all-time high on July 17.

But Friday's market action shows just how stomach-churning the ride can be for small investors as they sit tight. The Dow at one point lost 283 points, or more than three per cent, only to recover and close for the day with just a 78-point loss.

``I am concerned. I have been keeping my eggs all in one basket,'' said an individual investor Phil Driscoll who works as a customer service representative for an unnamed company. ``I am concerned because it has happened again and again. Before I saw this as acorrection, I think it is a bit more now.''

Driscoll, 38, lined up with five others to check stock prices on a quote machine at discount brokerage Charles Schwab Corp's office in New York's World Trade Centre.

But like many investors nationally, Driscoll wasn't ready to walk over to one of Schwab's brokers to place a sell order.

``What has been remarkable with this environment is that we haven't seen any panic selling, even with the market down 220 points today,'' said president Tom Quick of Fleet Financial Group Inc's discount broker Quick & Reilly. ``We're not seeing any big selling (by retail investors) from Quick & Reilly or from the 350 other brokerage firms we clear for.''

Mutual fund companies polled by Reuters on Friday reported that few investors have redeemed shares they held in stock funds over the last month, although Schwab saw some clients moving into bond funds.

That jibes with the impression of US market strategist Peter Canelo at full-service brokerage Morgan Stanley Dean Witter &Co has of investor activity.

``Retail investors are holding pretty steady,'' Canelo said through a spokesman. ``They're not buying as heavily as they did last October (when the market dropped sharply), but they're not selling either.''

Quick pointed out that his company's latest quarterly investor poll showed 41 per cent of investors would regard a 20-per cent drop in the Dow as a buying opportunity, while 53 per cent said they would stay on the sidelines. This is a far cry from the wave of panic selling that exacerbated the 1987 stock market crash, he added.

``People are not afraid of this market,'' Quick said.

``The bottom line people have learned from 1987 is that buying stocks for the long- term is where you are most successful.''

All the same, two customers at the Schwab office did shift some funds around as the Dow turned sharply downward Friday. Both, however, described themselves as ``financial analysts,'' which puts them closer to the professional investor camp than to the one-third of allAmericans who now own stock.

``I took out my short-term money and reallocated some of the longer-term money. About 50 per cent of my investments are in the stock market, which are now all long-term,'' said Brian Schmidt, 27. ``No one knows what's going to happen to the global economy, which has been driving the market.''

The other analyst, Vince Taddoni, 31, also said he believed turmoil in overseas emerging markets was likely to spook the US stock market for some time.