Comerica, Inc. (CMA)

The Fear Trade: Investors Pile into Gold and Treasuries
The Dow suffered its biggest one-day point drop in history (although not even close on a percentage loss basis) as investors moved out of stocks into traditional safe havens such as Treasuries and gold (GLD). The failure of Congress to approve the $700B bailout package stunned investors as lawmakers worked through the weekend and practically around the clock to put together a plan that was widely expected to pass. The Senate will return Wednesday night while the House meets again this Thursday following the Jewish New Year holiday recession.

In other signs of worry over a worsening global economic recession, the U.S. Oil Fund (USO) lost more than 10%, the Baltic Dry Index slipped to multi-year lows, the iShares Emerging Markets Index (EEM) was down over 11%, and the Market Vectors Steel ETF (SLX) was down over 16%. Very few stocks closed in the green today, but among stocks that I track BioSante Pharma (BPAX) surged by over 16% on over four times its average volume without any news releases to account for the move.

I plan to focus on the small and micro-cap biotech space since these companies trade in their own universe for the most part based on their clinical development activities regardless of the economy. I own shares of Cytori Therapeutics (CYTX), which had a mid-day surge in the midst of the market sell-off, but still ended the day in the red on light volume. Overall, I am still very cautious on the market and will keep most of my money in cash until the market stabilizes as the velocity of today's downturn around mid-day was unsettling.