UP AND DOWN WALL STREET
Shock and Awe
By A. ABELSON

A stock-market week that will live in infamy. Next time, you better believe Cassandra.

HOW DO YOU SAY "MASSACRE" IN AT LEAST A DOZEN LANGUAGES?

A little more urgent perhaps: Do you happen to know the best place to view the end of the world?

We watched last week -- and for some reason we suspect we were not alone -- with no little awe and plenty of shock as the stock market all but disappeared into the greatest sinkhole in all of investment history. The Dow Jones Industrials lost 18% over five trading sessions that swelled their loss for the past 12 months to 40%. The S&P 500 also was off 18% for the week, 43% for the 12 months. Not to be left behind, Nasdaq lost 15% for the week and 42% since October 2007.

In this race to the bottom, leading foreign markets were nothing if not competitive, while emerging markets magically became submerging markets. China and Russia are neck and neck for the rusty tin medal, each off by over 60% so far in this memorable market year. A number of far-away bourses decided the best way of stopping the free-fall in prices was to shut down and desperately seek some form of artificial resuscitation.

To try to thaw the stubbornly frozen credit markets, the chiefs of what purport to be the major economic powers, including our own blessed nation, held a quickie powwow and took a cut out of interest rates and hurled hundreds of billions more at needy or dissolute banks and kindred institutions around the world. The effort was herculean; too bad the effect wasn't.

As the tumultuous week drew to a close, hopes that economic shamans from the far corners of the planet -- scheduled to meet in confabs on Saturday and Sunday -- would concoct a cure for the financial ills that have befallen it encouraged a gentler Friday close in our markets. Or, it could be just that the sellers got plumb worn out and badly needed a rest.

It wouldn't knock our socks off if somewhere in here the market actually showed it can go up, at least for more than a session. Stocks tend to rally even in the ugliest bear markets, and this certainly is in that category. But it also, as many a technician has learned to his rue, thinks history is bunk and tramples all over precedent. We'll see.

The truism we fervently hope investors, big and small, amateur and pro, take away from their brush with the still-smoldering inferno that has consumed over $8 trillion of their hard-earned money is there are times when the worst advice you can possibly heed is the admonition, "Don't panic."

WE'VE ALWAYS HAD A THING FOR CASSANDRA, the ancient Trojan princess who was blessed with the gift of prophecy and burdened by the curse that prevented anyone from ever believing her. Just shows you how capricious those old Greek gods were -- prone, just for the sport of it, to handing out favors with their right hand while snatching them away with their left.

Of course, if she was the betting type -- and antiquity is silent on that score -- she might have drawn consolation from wagering on the Olympics and the odd marathon, after a quick peek into the future to catch the winner.