Since October 1, the Dow has lost 20.9% of its value, a dramatic loss for the U.S. Markets.

GM is trading at 1950 levels, as investors are unsure of its ability to raise enough capital to cover its operating costs over the next 18 months.

Foreign markets have been no safe haven, as ost have seen titanic losses over the past weeks.

This weekend’s meeting of the financial officials for the G7 countries may end in some short-term relief, but there is clearly no confidence in the leadership at this time. Investors are mostly finding Treasuries as safe-havens agains steep losses.

Keep in mind that there are buys out there. Strong companies that with historically strong dividend growth that deal in Consumer Staples should outperform the market, and a short-biased ETF can help reduce volatility, when used sparingly. A very small position (extremely small, as these are very volatile) in SKF (Proshares Ultrashort Financials) or SDS (Proshares Ultrashort S&P 500), coupled with strong-performing, dividend-paying stocks should do well in this market.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Stock Market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.