Afraid Yet?

My equity portfolio is ugly.  I'm bleeding money right now, and it hurts.  The most painful part of my portfolio is my international exposure which makes up half of my equities right now.  Lucky for me, I am mostly in cash, so I can't imagine what people who are not in as good of a position as I am must be feeling.

So how afraid are you?  If you aren't scared as all hell, we haven't reached the bottom quite yet.  Just look at some of the signs of fear in the market.  The volatility index , the standard measure of fear in the market, spiked today.  Treasurey yields, the rate of interest for the safefst of assets, is at a decade level low.  Gold spiked an unprecedented 11%.  People pile into these safe assets when there is fear, thus driving down the interest rate.  So people are running to wherever they can find cover.

When it seems like it can't get any worse, that's when you need to get in.  We aren't there yet.  But that doesn't mean your shopping list shouldn't be up to date.  Selective buying now, when nobody else wants to, will be prudent.  Just understand that the market probably has a few more percentage points down AND a few stocks still have to go to Zero.