I was in a meeting in Santa Monica today when I glanced at the market numbers before the close and was a little startled to see the Dow down 537 points. I was not going to post tonight, but see I have received a few notes and a couple of calls and texts regarding the carnage today.

If you look back at some of our posts before the February 18 (Dow was at 12,200) correction we expressed concern about how hot and fast the market had recovered. Then we had a our little correction and again as the P/E ratio for the S&P 500 creped near 15 we again mentioned the market might be overbought and to be careful. Then we warned of the wobblies as result of the debt ceiling reality show and said the balance of the year was not so bright. Yesterday we told you about some important technicals that if the market broke through, we might see a precipitous drop. Well today was pretty good evidence we broke through those technicals and things don't look to good.

Now here is the good news. If an idiot like me can call this, the market is acting rather orderly. This was not a panic sale today. It appears as though there was some early automated trading triggered by wobbly news out of Europe, then an orderly heavy volume sell off.

My suggestion would be do not panic. If you have put some of the defensive ideas to good use, you may have stopped out of a few positions, probably with a profit and some cash. Be ready to get back in the game.

I know after what you have been through with the great crash of 08-09 you are spooked. I can't blame you. You all just saw a 7-10% correction in your investments and retirement accounts in the last few weeks. It hurts and its scary, but it was anticipated. And, I am afraid to say it probably is not over.

Tomorrow we will hear more scary stuff out of Europe and we will have a disappointing jobs number. The experts are saying 75,000 new jobs, NOT! We are guessing more like 35,000. Look for another 2% off the market. Let those stops trigger on anything but your most perfect core holdings. When you get cash, be ready. Next week might very well be a time to add to those all but perfect high yielding value oriented stocks. After the probable 2% drop tomorrow, look for another 3% drop next week, but do your homework and add to your positions. We are not suggesting we time the market, but the values out there are very attractive, and we do not have the dreaded back drop of the entire financial institutions in the US about to collapse. We have avoided the debt ceiling Armageddon. European contagion will lurk about us for a while, but most of that has been built into the market.

So I will close by suggesting you take tomorrow off from worrying about the market. It will be a bad day. Count your cash and start thinking about where to possibly deploy your money next week. This is not 2008. The banks are much more sound than then and oil is not at 150 a barrel (YET). We will regret being cash poor at the moment, but with the home being complete and a wedding headed our way, cash poor seems to be status quo. We will miss some good opportunities over the next few weeks, but you do not have to. Our only trade today was to add to AMZN.

I am off to jolly old England tomorrow but might do a post or two time allowing.

Salve Lucrum