The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly lost as much as 1,000 points in early trading on Monday as fear has taken hold on Wall Street. Are the huge declines that started at the end of last week and carried over into this week the beginning of a bear market or are they simply a long-overdue bull market pullback?

Here are three reasons to panic and two reasons not to.

Reasons To Panic

1. China

The news of the decision to devalue its currency was compounded by weak manufacturing numbers on Friday. The world depends on China, the globe’s second-largest economy, to provide demand for goods and commodities such as iron, copper and oil.

2. Broken technicals

Key technical support levels were broken on the Nasdaq, the Dow and the S&P 500 in the past two trading days. The breakdown has technical analysts scrambling to predict where the major averages will find support now.

3. All-time highs

The S&P 500’s Monday swoon to as low as 1867 in early trading is…

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