Oct. 10--Years from now, investors may regret the bargains they missed out on during the stock market crash of 2008.

But Thursday, on the one-year anniversary of the market's all-time high, many just wanted out.

"There's wholesale panic right now," said Jon Bruss, chief executive of Fortress Partners Capital Management Ltd. in Hartland, after the Dow Jones industrial average fell another 678 points and hit a five-year low.

During another sickening session, the Dow fell for the seventh straight day, closing below 9,000 for the first time since June 2003.

Since reaching its record closing high of 14,164.53 on Oct. 9, 2007, the Dow has fallen more than 39 percent, making this the worst bear market since the Dow dropped 45 percent over a two-year period in 1973-'74.

Investment pros who may suspect that a bottom is near have all but given up trying to predict what's next.

"Everybody wants to come to investment managers now and know rationally what's going on, but obviously the market is trading totally irrationally right now, and fear's the driver," said Joseph Veranth, chief investment officer at Dana Investment Advisors Inc. in Brookfield. "It's not trading on fundamentals, it's trading irrationally -- so you can't look at stock values and pick a bottom."

It was the second straight day that the market plunged sharply in the final hour, and the sell-off came in spite of yet another attempt by the federal government to fight the financial crisis: It is considering taking equity stakes in major U.S. banks to help stabilize them.

Acquiring a stake in the banks would be yet another startling intervention by the government in the free market, but economists said President Bush was left with little choice because of the credit markets, where tight lending has choked off the everyday cash that is the lifeblood of the economy.

The declines in the major averages have reached historic proportions. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 75.02 points, or 7.6 percent, to 909.92; it has fallen for seven consecutive days, its longest such streak since 1996. The Dow dropped 678.91 points, or 7.3 percent, to 8,579.19. The Nasdaq composite decreased 5.5 percent to 1,645.12.

"The story is getting to be like that movie 'Groundhog Day'," Arthur Hogan, chief market analyst at Jefferies & Co., told the Associated Press. "Everything we're seeing is historic. The problem is historic, the solutions are historic, and unfortunately, the sell-off is historic.