YES, OUR ROUNDTABLE MEMBERS EXPECTED the stock market to struggle in this year's first half. But nearly collapse in its first month? That wasn't in anyone's playbook when we gathered on Jan. 7 for our annual gabfest about all things investment-related. And yet, the Dow industrials have plummeted 8% since the start of 2008, the Nasdaq Composite, 12%. Fearing a recession, the Federal Reserve has lopped a fat three-fourths of a percentage point off its short-term interest-rate target, while Washington has cooked up a "stimulus" package to put cash in consumers' pockets. And overseas marts, from Brazil to Germany to India, have tanked by double digits. So much for the hope that the rest of the globe had "decoupled" from America's problems -- a notion, you might recall, that our experts scoffed at in these pages two weeks ago.
Given last week's carnage, we thought it wise to check in again with the five investment pros whose picks and pans for the new year are featured in this final Roundtable installment. What, we wondered, do Felix Zulauf, Abby Joseph Cohen, Marc Faber, Archie MacAllaster and Scott Black make of the mighty downdraft in shares, and what might it portend?
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