Craigs Investment Partners broker Peter McIntyre said yesterday the S&P 500 closed at its lowest point in more than a year as US oil prices plummeted to 2003 lows.
However, at the end of the trading day, there were signs of investors wanting to buy into the market.
Energy stocks were up in Australia in afternoon trading, mainly from institutions being prepared to buy and wait, he said.
Asian stocks also opened higher but the Chinese market was down.
The New Zealand sharemarket was the only one to be in positive territory on a rolling three-month average, figures released yesterday showed.
The NZX50 was up 3.7% for the period, compared with the ASX200's 7.5% drop, the Nasdaq was down 11.1%, the S&P 500 down 10.1% and the British FTSE100 down 10.6%.
Mr McIntyre said that New Zealand's NZX was unsophisticated compared with overseas markets.
It did not have many financial tools, such as put options, which investors overseas had access to when trading.
The lack of sophistication also meant less volatility.
"Post 1987, companies don't have big flash buildings in Auckland and share certificates you would light your fire with at night. The likelihood of any company going bankrupt now is remote on our exchange moving into the 21st century.''
China remained a major cause of the market volatility, after the Chinese Government stepped in and stopped trading earlier in the year, he said.
It was also important to remember the huge amount of fiscal stimulus poured into the US economy in past years.
Some of the US market volatility could be down to margin calls where people had borrowed to invest in a rising sharemarket.
As the market dropped, banks had called in some of their money and investors with debt had to sell shares to pay back the money they borrowed, Mr McIntyre said.
The Chinese currency also had a volatile start to 2016, but the People's Bank of China (PBOC) has kept a steady course for the yuan's daily midpoint fix, from which it can vary by up to 2%, for two weeks.
The Thursday fix was barely changed at 6.5585 yuan per $US1.
The central bank was also generous with liquidity before the Chinese New Year holiday by injecting a net 315 billion yuan ($NZ74.4billion) into the banking system for the week, a much larger amount of cash than it provided before the holiday period last year.
The PBOC has acted aggressively to deter speculators from shorting the yuan, which has fallen about 5% since August and encouraged a destabilising outflow of capital.
On Wednesday, the central bank said that it would improve policy co-ordination to promote economic growth and curb financial risks, though it provided no details on steps or timing.
Two surprise yuan devaluations in six months and a cooling economy have only reinforced market expectations that something will have to give.
Speculators have taken to using the yuan's cheaper offshore forwards market to wager China will finally devalue the currency around March or April.
