DOW down 400

what about all the fuel surcharges that airline, delivery company and other business was charging don't see them falling

I don't want to jinx the year, but you know, this may be one of the worst fiscal years since 2008 for the stock market and investing...and the forecast for people in the economy may be the same.

All of this is going to have a traumatic effect upon retailers and the job market throughout the year and the hiring patterns since all the corporations that thrive off of Wall Street are not going to be getting what they want or need. You know they're going to make all of their employees and everyone else suffer or pay the price for it as usual.

Staying optimistic, it "could" be an investment opportunity, but the direction it's heading means that the price of food and other daily living expenses is going to rise as the result of this with them citing "lost marketshare in other places" to justify it.

When the price of gas goes down and their investment in it drops, they're going to make all the excuses they can as to why they have to downsize and cut thousands more jobs, leaving thousands more people unemployed. In America alone, I'm seeing that they have over 100 million people out of work, which is about 1/3rd of the entire nation's population there.

Some people in other countries may or may not care as much but they should, because when the Americans and Europeans are out of work, the people they outsource work to in Asia, Africa, and everywhere else will be out of work also.

I'm not looking forward to the corporate reasoning and excuses behind this, because everyone I know is already having a hard enough time trying to make it and survive as it is. If this doesn't get rid of the middle class creating only the rich and the poor, I'm not sure what will.

I think this is the year that I finally take an interest in the stock market and begin actively buying. It's about time I made some investments and stopped living paycheck to paycheck. Would now still be a good time to buy or should I wait for the market to drop again?