haspete's - aint no gfc - monday, page-4

BD,
The big difference between the GFC and now is that there hasn't been the huge withdrawal of liquidity that happened during the GFC. Then the banking system froze up and credit simply wasn't available to those who needed it. To date this has been a garden variety market emotional tizzy, built on the fear of a new credit crunch, but without much evidence of one (yet in any case). Its made a bit worse because many investors are emotionally scarred by the GFC, and dip buying is much more subdued.

The third leg of a major bear market is sometimes characterized as "death by a thousand cuts", quite different to the catastrophic plunge of the first leg. This may be a worse scenario for anyone still with the perma-bull mentality - a market that repeatedly sucks you in thinking the worst is over, only to disappoint with yet another drop as buyer support fails to follow through into sustainable gains. But even in that scenario there will be opportunities to make money on the long side (especially at emotional extremes as I suspect we are near), but may call for different tactics - especially a well prepared exit strategy.