about a month ago I was talking with my financial planner. in light of everything that is happening and the bottom was dropping out of the market he's telling me half of his clients are in panic mode and half are excited about it. I'm of the latter, and started seeing dollar signs when the market went below 25k. we made some significant additional purchases of stocks we already owned that have been doing well when the DOW was just over 19k, almost low pointing it perfectly. bought all of them measurably lower than the first time we bought. one notable one is BP. we bought a few hundred shares right after the Gulf oil spill at about $27/share when their stock tanked. it pays a great dividend, and at one point it was over $55(doubling my money) a share. it hasn't been anywhere near that in several years, but we bought more BP a few weeks ago for $17 and change as the dividend has remained solid. I think we've tripled our money on BP in about 10 years. according to Cliff, "fortunes are made when there's blood in the streets, my friend." we'll see.
I forgot to say that what we did is called "averaging down", which means we lower the average price/cost for the asset by buying it again at a lower price. not the sort of maneuver to engage in unless you intend to hold on to the asset for a long time, which I do, and are very confident the value will go up again, which I am. I'm not a gambler most of the time, and I probably wouldn't have the stones to put up the kind of money we just did without my experienced professional money manager vigorously encouraging me to empty the cookie jar and dig up all those coffee cans in the back yard.