What To Do Now

While watching the market tank everyday-many days opening high and then crashing after a couple of hours-has me down. As I said before, I thought that the worst was behind us, and I was wrong. Since I started sharing my long term picks on this site (see lower left) The S&P 500 is down more than 5%, but the worst part is that the market had jumped over 7% before losing it all and then some. This makes me sad because I feel like a optimistic dumb-ass. I lost about 15% on holding Citigroup (C) long, and finally closed out a little while ago, feeling that I might as well cut some losses. I also closed out the long position on Vale ADR (RIO), as I felt bears were swamping almost all stocks, and I'd like to preserve some gains.
However, I did add one long position to my portfolio: Wal-Mart (WMT.) As I have talked about before (See My recession article ) I think WMT is a great play when the economy is doing ugly things. While low consumer sentiment, high unemployment and even higher gas prices may seem like big negatives for a retailer, WMT is different. Wal-Mart provides really cheap, yet quality goods, which is good for people who feel the economy is doing poorly and don't have jobs but still need food and toilet paper. Also, WMT has pretty much everything you could need at one location, and so for those who don't feel like driving around on $5 gas it serves as a one stop shop. All of these bode well for WMT. They keep costs low, drive away competition because of it and when people are short on cash, look incredibly attractive when it comes to buying the necessities. They also look good to me as a company that can survive these dire times.