Fear is the new mindset in the irrational world of finance

facts, hope, hype

Cool quote: "3 great forces rule the world - stupidity, fear, and greed."

Now, stupidity (ignorance) is an evil thing, in terms of it is a cause of evil.

Greed, on the other hand, following Mr. Gecko, I would say, is good. "It captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit", and all that.

Fear, can be good or evil, depending on context. Fear of investing in a dot-com with no real revenue is a good thing. Failing to see underlying fudamentals and selling off in a state of panic is a bad thing. Basically fear in terms of preservation of one's assets (or "ass", lol!) is good. Fear based on that other great force, stupidity, is bad.

One could generalize this to say: fear based on the evil force (stupidity) is itself evil, fear based on the good force (greed) is itself good.

I am not a financial analyst but I think my general "two cents" would just be: look at fundamentals - profitability, sector, all those things. If those are good, buy, or at least hold, depending on situation. If they are not, sell. Simple as that. Don't sell from stupid fear. Sell only if rational greed requires it, and then reposition into something safer, like say money markets. :-)