Imagine your reaction if you were dependent on Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, the fund that reported a $52 billion quarterly loss last Friday. Sure it sounds scary when all that you worked for might be at risk, but we say you shouldn’t panic in such instances. It was only a 3.9 percent drop over one quarter, which is no big deal.

Why? A quarter (or maybe even two) of poor performance by a mutual fund doesn’t mean it’s all downhill from there. Take Brexit, for example. Everyone was losing money on their investments when the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU became clear, but guess what? Things got better and markets saw recovery and a number of mutual funds improved their gains.

A Weiss rated mutual fund can show some prior losses, yet still have a BUY recommendation. That’s because we analyze and rate funds to reflect the long term expectations.

So, for example, Virtus Greater European Opportunities Fund Class I shows a 2.08 percent loss over the last three months, but indicates one, three, and five-year gains. Although there were some short term negative results the fund was upgraded to a B- in June, 2016. Remember you are investing in a mutual fund for risk diversification and longer term results.

In the Japanese fund case, the fund president emphasized that the focus is on the long term, and the short term market fluctuation won’t hurt the investors. Clearly, that’s what you would expect to hear from the executives of a fund that just lost tens of billions, but in fact they might be telling the truth.