Online stock trading for me up to this point had been simple. I checked my portfolio about once per month and that was that. Much of what I was holding was long. Why not? There was a bull market up until last year right about this time.  The pressure downward this year had been part of what I thought was a normal correction.  It was slow but gradual.

The last couple of weeks have made me glad that I am doing online stock trading, as opposed to the old fashioned way, which had me going blind by reading the stock quotes in the paper and calling my broker when I could.

I often missed buying and selling opportunities, because of being unable to call when I needed to.

After Mr. Callahan spoke to our club, I tried to figure out how to salvage what I had. It wasn’t easy. Mr. Callahan was active on the  Chicago Board of Trade during the Panic of 1929. He is probably the only trader alive who can remember that day and the Great Depression that followed. He is 101 years old.

Now,  it was too expensive to buy puts on those companies that I wanted to buy on, with such a short expiration or strike.

I began to think longer term, like what to do after stocks hit bottom and the blood is running in the streets. The answer to the question was not up to me.  Rather, it was up to the US government and the rest of the world governments and central banks.

My fear is that they will make a bad matter worse, by dragging things in the way of having equity positions wiped out and making room for new buyers.

I began to really take a look at some of the sectors in the market. And then at various companies in those sectors.

My first sector, because I haven’t punished myself enough, was the financial and banking sector.

I looked at a number of regional banks. I liked two.  I like Huntington National and TCF. Both had decent P/E ratios and both had stayed away from the sub prime swamp.  So I booked marked both and kept looking.

Echos of Mr. Callahan’s talk was ringing in my ears.  Mr. Callahan had known Benard Berauch, the famous investor and politician, who had shorted the market during the Panic of 1929, and had made a fortune.

One of Benard Berauch’s famous sayings was, “A speculator is a man who sees the future and acts before it occurs.”