Jack Hope isn’t rattled by Wall Street’s latest pothole.

With the housing contractor and designer shoring up his retirement planning with a collection of index and other mutual funds, even the most painful one-day collapse in more than five years couldn’t steer him from his financial course.

“The market is not a place for somebody who works for a living to be screwing around with,” said Hope, owner of Jack Hope Design, who stopped buying individual stocks five years ago after unwillingly giving back massive gains on Netopia. “I’m not smart enough or dedicated enough.”

Hope and other folks in Lawrence found themselves mulling their options Wednesday, a day after worldwide financial jitters triggered Wall Street’s worst single-day performance since the 9/11 attacks.

That the Dow Jones industrial average regained 52 of the 416 points came as no surprise to Sally Monahan Zogry, development assistant at Health Care Access. Not that it mattered.

She wasn’t about to realign her 401(k) allocations for a retirement that remains at least two decades away.

“People may be freaking out about the stock market, but I’m more concerned about what it does to the national economy,” Zogry said. “I’m not thinking about my personal situation.”