Rough close yesterday, yowza.

We are scheduled to fly back to the mainland today a couple of hours after the close, unless we accidentally miss our flight.

Did you see the Greenspan interview with Maria yesterday? A panel of financial experts? I didn’t know any existed.

I did not get a sense of panic being conveyed yesterday which could be taken a couple of different ways I suppose but I noticed something in the parade of what’s happening now segments more so in the questions asked than the answers given.

This hearkens to something Taleb talked about; the need to explain. Sometimes the best explanation is no explanation. If this is a bear market then we can count on it doing certain things. One of which is sawtoothing down to a 30% drop (maybe a little less, maybe a little more or maybe a lot more). The reason for Tuesday’s 3.4% drop might be X but it is simply one more tooth in the saw.

The best thing investors can do is wrap their arms around that this is a bear market and this is how they work.

My target for a bottom for SPX has been 1095 because that is 30% from the top and I still believe the bear will be close to normal.

Everyone knows oil, gold, currencies, mining and emerging markets have been pasted in the last couple of months. This has naturally drawn out many people that are extrapolating the trends to continue like $80 oil and $650 gold similar to the $200 oil calls back when it was in the $140s.

If you are interested in just maintaining a diversified portfolio then you don’t really need to get too caught up in this sort of thing (diversified portfolio assumes no lopsided bets). Over the last few years these segments have provided an awful lot of lift without having to pick stocks (as opposed to tech where only a few names have done consistently well).

The period where these segments can do this may be over (but i don’t think that will be the case, I think this is a big fast panic as the others have been). If so then there will be other parts of the market that fill this role. Yesterday healthcare, telecom, utilities and staples did relatively well.

It is much easier to try to figure whether you have enough or too much as opposed to whether you should have any.

Last 5 posts by Roger Nusbaum

• The Big Picture for the Week of November 15, 2009 - November 14th, 2009
• Process Drilldown - October 23rd, 2009
• Sunday Morning Coffee 10-18-09 - October 18th, 2009
• A Little Followup From This Morning - October 8th, 2009
• Wednesday Roundup - October 7th, 2009