" Let's look at this thing from a... um, from a standpoint of status. What do we got on the spacecraft that's good? " Best to look at the Capital Goods stocks.

Dow Jones Industrial Average    11,269  Week ending 08-12-2011

2:13 p.m. EST, April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 launches from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.  

"Spacecraft systems performance was nominal until the fans in cryogenic oxygen tank 2 were turned on at 55:53:18 ground elapsed time (GET). About 2 seconds after energizing the fan circuit, a short was indicated in the current from fuel cell 3, which was supplying power to cryogenic oxygen tank 2 fans. Within several additional seconds, two other shorted conditions occurred.

Electrical shorts in the fan circuit ignited the wire insulation, causing temperature and pressure to increase within cryogenic oxygen tank 2. When pressure reached the cryogenic oxygen tank 2 relief valve full-flow conditions of 1008 psi, the pressure began decreasing for about 9 seconds, at which time the relief valve probably reseated, causing the pressure to rise again momentarily. About a quarter of a second later, a vibration disturbance was noted on the command module accelerometers.

The next series of events occurred within a fraction of a second between the accelerometer disturbances and the data loss. A tank line burst, because of heat, in the vacuum jacket pressurizing the annulus and, in turn, causing the blow-out plug on the vacuum jacket to rupture. Some mechanism in bay 4 combined with the oxygen buildup in that bay to cause a rapid pressure rise which resulted in separation of the outer panel. The panel struck one of the dishes of the high-gain antenna. The panel separation shock closed the fuel cell 1 and 3 oxygen reactant shut-off valves and several propellant and helium isolation valves in the reaction control system. Data were lost for about 1.8 seconds as the high-gain antenna switched from narrow beam to wide beam, because of the antenna being hit and damaged."

At this point, NASA Flight director, Eugene Francis "Gene" Kranz asks his team, "Let's look at this thing from a... um, from a standpoint of status. What do we got on the spacecraft that's good?" One of his many famous quotes during the Apollo 13 mission. Of course his most famous is : "Failure is not an option",  which leads us directly into the discussion about your retirement and stock investment mission.

We have had a bit of an explosion here ourselves in the market these past two weeks to our retirement equity values for us Boomers in our 50's and 60's who will retire sooner then other folks. We still need to get back from the moon and have our splashdown of retirement, so we have a ways to go yet here.  Just like Gene said, "Failure is not an option". So what is the plan of action?

Two things you should not do here is sell your stocks and invest in Gold, which is at an all time high price. Second, you should not sell your stocks while they are down and move into yield-less, no risk cash positions.  What you should do is continue to invest in stocks. Although all the government entities have their balance sheets in a wreck, and the labor markets are all out of whack, the saving grace may be that companies are actually in quite good shape on their balance sheets for the most part.

 One area I would look at is the Capital Goods stocks. Some of those names would be:

Boeing Co. (Symbol BA, $61.75)
Parker Hannifin Corp. (Symbol PH, $69.58)
Roper Industries Inc. (Symbol ROP, $72.63)
Rockwell Automation Corp. (Symbol ROK, $64.93)
Ingersoll-Rand Co. Ltd. (Symbol IR, $30.39)
and my favorite is,
Cummins Inc. ( Symbol CMI, $94.47) which I mentioned 2 weeks ago in my blog.

as a bonus I will give you one outside of this group that is rock solid, Qualcomm Inc. (Symbol QCOM, $50.50). The stocks in this group may be down temporarily but rest assured they will move back up.

So the computer "war games", (investment buy and sell programs that have dominated the market), should start to slow down here and bring the VIX down into a more civil range. The above stocks should fare well going forward.

Nothing is going to get settled here quickly, so stay patient and move strategically into small positions, so you can make adjustments quickly to your portfolio.

                                                              Freewilly