Far from a bottom - but some segmenting is happening

Well, I just got back from Japan. It seems every time I hed overseas, a big crash happens in the market.

The final wave of a crash is typified by retail customers pulling out. I suspect that will happen strongly this week. So why am I still long?

To begin with, the model here doesn't allow me much leeway - I agreed to keep this a simple model with no option plays. However, I am thinkingthat we should buy a contrarian ETF fund like Proshares.

Also, I think we will be rewarded for holding through this earnings season. Consider the GE earnings report last week. The CEO said:
"Every place we went, there's a need for power, there's a need for planes, and there's just no signs that this global infrastructure boom is slowing at all."
And that's where we are firmly invested. That's what I call segmenting: we will start to see separation, with consumer related stocks continuing to crash and infrastructure related stocks continuing to grow their business.

As if to underscore this point, the question was raised: "... how long does it last and how does the U.S. recession impact the rest of the world?"

The US consumer needs to be written off and even in these sectors there is a slowing growth.

The US faces a simple choice between a painful and deep recession or a lingering, multiyear recession. The odds are on the latter, not the former. Again, we are not talking about a technical recession where we roll back the housing bubble and the math works out to falling GDP. I mean slow consumer spending across the board.

I think you should focus on buying puts. A strategy is to buy and then sell by the end of the week. Don't wait too long imho. Although I think we have yet to see a bottom, individual stocks could see a sudden move up. There is some bottom feeding that could push a stock up in the short term.