Alka Seltzer Week for fund manager.

A 25-year veteran of the securities business, Norman Sarafian has seen his share of stock market ups and downs. But nothing could have prepared him for the extreme market turmoil of last week, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged a record 554 points on Monday, Oct. 27, only to rebound 337 points the following day.

Such volatility inspired a sense of vertigo and even dread among many investors and market watchers. But the brokers and money managers who spend their days in the world's financial trenches consider themselves a cool-headed lot - and Sarafian is no exception.

A 48-year-old senior investment officer in the Pasadena office of the retail brokerage Crowell, Weedon & Co., Sarafian manages some $95 million in investments for about 300 active clients. He is a passionate believer in strong-performing blue chip stocks, and saw Monday's sell-off and Tuesday's rebound less as a debacle than as a rare opportunity to purchase blue chips at bargain rates.

Nonetheless, he says, they were two days he never will forget.

I get up early every day, as early as 5:15, and watch CNBC over breakfast. On Monday, they were reporting that the Globex Index (an index of globally traded futures contracts based on the S&P 500) had dropped to the maximum. The Hang Seng also was down. All of these dire faces on CNBC were telling me that the market was going to open down sharply. I decided to get to work early to evaluate what the magnitude of the drop might be.

It started out as a day like any other. We knew that the market would be down, but we've been conditioned to have down days. I didn't notice anything unusual.

The market dropped 100 points in the first hour. It stayed weak and continued to get weaker by the hour. When the drop went beyond 200 points, the phone began ringing they weren't exactly panic calls, but people were concerned. "Am I losing all my money? What should we do?"

I told them to look back at April. when we had a significant drop that lasted several weeks. Remember 1987? It was terrible for six weeks, but look at what the aftermath brought. Instead of being pessimistic about the day, I tried to tell them to be optimistic about the next six months.

I felt like this was not something to be overly concerned about. That was my personal feeling and I kept it to myself, because you never know. It's all crystal-ball gazing. But I felt pretty comfortable that this was more a psychological issue than an economic issue.

My clientele is mostly a retail clientele - that is, individual investors with $10,000 to $4 million. They don't need to perform in the short term, so they're not necessarily going to be hung up on a swing like this. I tried to nibble on a few good names and capitalize on the drop. Let's take a position in a Compaq Computer, in a Ford Motor Co. Let's look at some of these blue chips that have been damaged and nibble.

We were all watching the news, and talking to each other more than usual. "What do you think is happening? What will happen next?" Once you get past minus 225 or so, that's not normal. Over 225, you start wondering, "What is going on here?"

Then they halted trading. The frustration of not being able to do business sank in. During that half-hour, I made some calls to my more market-sensitive clients and explained what was happening. When trading began again, everything happened so fast. I think the circuit breaker helped the market sell off even faster. Everyone was nervous.

I had lunch with my manager, Luis Shackett. We talked about what to do, some new offerings that we might try, some income-sensitive things that might make sense. How do we deal with this unusual situation?

After lunch, I continued to make calls to people who might be willing to capitalize on the fall. Intel, Compaq, Dell ... some of the technology shares had been unusually beaten down. Looking at the depressed blue chips, you had to feel there was reason to be nibbling. It's a chance you normally don't see. I mean, how many times in your life will you see a 550 point drop?

I spent the afternoon on the phone and went home at about 6. It wasn't a happy day and I was relieved to get it over with. My nerves were frayed. I was on the phone the entire time. I think it was the longest day I've had.

Normally, I wouldn't waste my time watching all the news reports, but I spent the evening in front of the television. My wife was very annoyed with me and even told me to watch the football game instead.

I got up at 4:30 on Tuesday. On CNBC, they were saying, "Brace yourself for a terrible day." I was prepared for anything. I was looking as an opportunist and planned on doing a lot of buying. I entered a couple of orders that didn't get executed. It was ragged in the early morning. But once I saw the buying step in, I knew it was going to be a big day.

The problem was, I couldn't execute buys on the prices quoted on the screen.

There was one company on Nasdaq, American Coin; I'd seen the road show and was confident. It was initially offered at $16, but because of Monday's drop, it was selling at $10. I could not get through to the dealer. As the market turned, the price went up. Now it was at $12-7/8. I really wanted to get this, but we still couldn't get through. I was so frustrated. An hour later, it was offered at $15. The opportunity was lost.

I was on the phone all day. We were buying up blue chips, and taking selling orders to get into better stocks. The volume really shocked me. I remember having 9 million-share days; now we're trading 1.2 billion shares in one day. That was shocking.

I was exhausted when I got home that night. I had dinner. I did some homework with my kids, just trying to get my mind off the day.

As for the future, I'm extremely bullish. I never did believe in international investing. I think this debacle overseas is going to be very instructive for many people. You don't know what you're investing in when you buy into Hong Kong or China. Do we really know what the accounting principles are? A lot of the foreign funds have been decimated.

My theory is, this will open a new wave of imagination about what's possible in our markets instead of playing in foreign markets. People are going to bring their money back home. I think we're in for a very bullish time.