I thought this was the chocolate pudding thread!

Hoist! 
It might as well be the chocolate pudding thread. Nobody has a clue as to what is about to happen to the stock market, and that's the truth.
Back in 1989 (1987, I forget?) when we had a market crash of 500 or so points, I cashed out & put my money elsewhere. Dumbest thing I could have done at the time & by the time I got back into the market, it had already risen significantly. I had put the money in bonds, so did not lose anything, but the rate of return sucked. Lost substantial $$ in that market crash as a result of bailing out.
Paid off our credit cards after that & have kept monthly revolving credit (car payments, etc.) to a minimum since then. Almost to the point where we will not need to borrow money for any vehicle purchase in the foreseeable future. Drove older cars that were paid for to get to that spot & I am sick of paying interest. Would rather receive interest on my investments.
We paid the house off a few years ago. Have looked at some real estate investments since, but have not bought anything. Turned out to be smart - each & every one of them is worth less than we would have paid for it several years ago. Would have lost major bucks, so waiting out a ridiculous real estate market spike proved out to be the right thing to do. I watched a boom/bust real estate cycle in Texas back in the 70's & 80's & the recent one here in Florida smelled exactly like that. So we are still watching some real estate & when it looks closer to the bottom (sometime in 2009 maybe) we will buy.
On the stock market - lost some major dinero this week & over the past few weeks. Have not done anything but watch it. My bet is the market will stabilize. Sure as hell hope so. Not happy about it but from past experience cashing out just shorts me on any market uptick & I cannot time it very well. Wish I could. Folks that say they can - lucky them. Plan to divert some bucks into real estate after the real estate market finishes tanking to hedge my bets as to investments.
Anyway, decided I still like chocolate pudding & I know a lot more about that than the stock market. Did not see/hear anybody predicting this type downturn, but figure a few talky heads will come out & claim they did. Some were calling for this to happen back in 2000, so their timing kinda stinks, IMHO.
Jello is good, too.
