When will stocks hit bottom?

This is what panic looks like, said the editors of BusinessWeek.com. U.S. stocks were "whipsawed" on Friday, plunging in the morning, recovering, and sinking deeply later in the day. President Bush said the government was increasing deposit insurance, expanding loans to corporations, and pumping money into the banking system, but investors still fear worse is yet to come.

They might be right, said Mark Hulbert in MarketWatch. Typically, the markets don't hit bottom until a few influential financial analysts who are diehard buy-and-hold investors get rattled and decide it's time to sell and try to time the market. That hasn't happened yet.

Stocks won't hit bottom until real value investors start buying all at once, said Aaron Task in Yahoo Finance. Either that isn't happening or it's being canceled out by all the selling. Technical analyst John Roque of Natixis Bleichroeder says that might not happen until the Dow falls another 1,000 points.

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