not over yet

The same talking heads that were screaming that the end of the financial world is nigh, are now (for the most part) calling for everything to be OK, meaning that markets will go back to they way they were. That isn't happening, nor should it. To parphrase Gordon Gekko, "Fear is good". Fear, meaning acknowledgement of the existance of credit risk, is going to be with us for some time, or at least until the quants out there create new products and strategies to allegedly eliminate it. Since the advent of the cheap computing age, the credit markets go through this five year boom/bust cycles, sometimes in concert with the equity markets. Look at 1987, 1994, 1998, 2002, and now 2007.

It is going to be tough going for the markets, probably for the rest of the year at least. Until liquidity reaches some equilibrium (what Sec. Paulson called yesterday "normal liquidity", not what has existed recently) there are going to be wild swings in many different market. However, it is these swings that create anomalies. Not every entity has been affected, and some who have, have the wherewithal to get by this easily and quickly. Financials have been beaten up, but there are companies that have a variety of businesses away from the market turmoil that will continue to do well. Not every firm is Bear Stearns or Countrywide. Pick and choose spots in out of favor markets. If income is important, take a look at preferreds. Perversely, since preferreds are generally listed on an exchange (not all) and are usually purchased by individual investors, the lack of institutional focus on that market creates pricing discrepancies. Sometimes these descrepencies exist within different issues of the same company. A good broker should be able to help you with this. If not, reply to this post .