On March 4, I instructed the custodian of my son's 529 college savings account to liquidate all stock investments and convert the balance to FDIC insured Certificates of Deposit (CDs). When I made that decision, the account's balance was in the neighborhood of $126,000. Those instructions were executed the following Monday, March 6. That was a relatively flat day for the market, but it happened to be just before the Silicon Valley Bank collapse began roiling the stock market.

My timing could not have been better. By making the move when I did, I protected the account from seeing more than  a $5,700 decline in just a few days. Importantly, it's also immune from any further market fallout that may follow as investors digest the loss of that critically important part of the high-tech venture capital-backed part of the economy. That timing raises a key question: How exactly did I know to liquidate that $126,000 just before the troubles started?

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