off topic How low will she go?

I never thought I would be concerned about money I have in money market or bond funds or my relatives but now I'm thinking, what is the chance of losing that money?

"How would you protect against that?" is theoretically possible, but that would be part of a general collapse, but you cannot protect yourself and at that point guns and bullets and food stocks -will be all that's left that's important, so its not worth worrying about anyways. More likely is a 1 to 3 year deep recession to clean things up, and to wake up the average lazy american.

If a bond insurer files for Chapter 11, a reorganization and restructering of debt and ooerations, the assets are protected. If the company files for a Chapter 7 liquidation, assets are sold ASAP. "Going bankrupt" is thrown around a lot, with little understanding of what might happenin.

Don't worry, be happy!

I don't pay any attention to the market, although I do have substantial investments in stocks, since regardless of what it does today I haven't actually lost any money unless I sell today. Just buy and forget for a few years and you will do fine and NOT drive yourself nuts watching the ups and downs of the Dow or NASDAQ.

I'm not worried. I put most of my retirement money into a money market account in December. I think buy and hold works a lot better for bull markets than it does for bear markets.

However I'm also interested in trading since it seems like a game to me. Now, I need to know all the rules so that I can play good. Lots of information is out there I noticed.

Is this the proper venue to look for financial advice?

I used to work for a guy whose favorite expression was, "I can't tell you which direction the next 25% change in the market will be, but I can tell you which direction the next 100% change will be." That's good enough for me.

This is the only venue for financial advice. And my worry is, that the next 100% change in the market might NOT be upwards.

The Dow should drop over 500 points within minutes of opening Tuesday morning. Going to be rough for stock owners, unless you shorted the market. I always think of something I forgot to do. Might not be too late though.

Correction, 650 points down. Seems like a bit of an overeaction since I didn't think the economy was that bad. Maybe it'll bounce back a little later in the week.

Not sure what the tally was at the closing bell, but casualguy was on target.

Not seeing any safe havens right now, as the sickness is going global, real estate sucks, interest rates are low.

Best to spend it while you have it, maybe at strip clubs. Now, that's a stimulus package.

Only closed down over 100 something. Ben intervened. I guess I'm a risk taker or have some desire to play. I invested today in one stock. However it went up 4 percent afterwards. I guess I'll see if it's still a good choice when they report earnings.

You can all save yourselves an ulcer if you just stop watching the market for about 6 months. Five years from now you won't even remember this episode. (Footnote to you worriers - in past recessions the stock market has INCREASED an average of 2.9%.)

Today I remembered I need to set parameters when trading. Sold too early. Started worrying about, yeah I might make a little bit now but what if the bottom suddenly drops out? I'll wait for it to sink further. I expect it will go up for a little while though but I'm going to sit this little run out.

Fondl, I want to play the market and prove that you can time the market and make more money than a simple buy and hold strategy. I'm learning though by experimenting. I think I'm far ahead of where I would have been if I had just bought and held. If I get this down, I will be a millionaire given enough time. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. However if I do get it down, I probably won't be bothering to talk about it to everybody else who has no interest in making lots of money playing with stocks, etc. I have already realized that most people really do not seem interested in this subject. When most people talk about it, they only like to talk about it in generalities, yep it was really bad today, or yep, it was a wild day. That just means to me about 95 percent of the people holding stocks will be following a herd mentality or many people just buying and holding still. I'm ok with that. I going to bet the market bottom is in May. Right now I'm wondering how big the bounce will be before it tanks again.

Maybe I just want to prove one web site and theory is right or wrong. So far it seems more right than wrong. I remember when no one believed the theory that dinosaurs were killed off by an asteroid impact. It would probably be easier to convince myself one way or the other by subscribing to the service but I don't want to fork over 125 a month unless I become more convinced it really does work.

The other day I surfed upon a service that had like 29 parameters it searched for in stocks that would often generate over 100 percent returns in a single year. The service cost was about 5000 a year. You have to be rich to be able to afford that price.

I think most people are relying upon the expertise of market experts to know what to buy and hold. The market experts are timing the market or making predictions about future prices every time they issue buy, hold, or sell recommendations. Most of these experts or in the case of financial newsletters aren't even beating the 12 percent average return per year of the Wilshire 5000 index. I may have gotten in the wrong profession. This stuff interests me a lot more than my current job. I'll just study it in my spare time and see if I get good at it.

Casual: if you learn "how to get into" that stuff send me a PM and I'll learn along with you. I keep seeing long-term investment in index-funds beating all the time-the-market strategies too.

Well Book Guy and any others, if you just want to buy and hold and beat the majority of other investors on a long term basis. I would try a temporary free subscription to The Hulbert Financial Digest and find a newsletter service appropriate for your investing style. If you don't cancel your free subscription, I believe the cost is only 59 per year for email newsletters or 69 for print. Then you can read and/or subscribe to the top performing newsletters. Motley Fool has some good performing newsletters as well but their style is to buy and hold. They are educational and I enjoy reading some of their articles. One of the editors on Marketwatch.com I believe mentions articles or newsletters or how they rank according to the Hulbert Financial Digest - a source for evaluating the hundreds of newsletter services out there. According to the digest, over 80 percent don't beat the 12 percent average return of the Wilshire 5000 index on a long term basis. I wish I had known this information many years ago but I'm learning now.

What I would really like is if I could move my money currently in my 401K at work into a brokerage account and get a much higher rate of return rather than keep it locked into one of about 5 differnt accounts with severe time restrictions on how often you can move the money around. Since that one is so limited, I'm only moving that money around for longer term monthly trends. I moved almost all of it to money market in December accurately seeing the bear market we're in now. Then I plan on moving it all back to stock in May when I believe we'll hit a bottom in the Dow. That's my bet at least. If the market moves down 20 percent from Jan to May, I get in at the bottom and then it goes back up to break even, I will have a 20 percent gain versus someone who bought and held. I will then listen to those who say it's better to buy and hold but know I just made a 20 percent gain that they didn't. That's my plans at least.

The 95 percent of the investing public who aren't that interested and don't read that much about investing are better off buying and holding in my opinion though. As long as they are buying and holding good investments with diversification. As they get closer to retirement, they should be moving a majority of their funds to more conservative funds if they're going to need them for retirement. So there you have it, I agree that 95 percent of the investing public is better off just buying and holding.
If you don't have time to read all that or just want something to follow, I believe motleyfools stock advisor or motleyfools hidden gems have had a good return long term along with theoxfordclub and a few others. I thought about subscribing to those but haven't yet.

Now's probably a good time to buy with the intent to hold. Prices are down ... :)