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That's because despite the overall indexes cracking through multi-month support levels and several large firms forecasting outright financial collapse over the next few weeks and months -- not paranoia, but based on the black hole that is most banks' and financial firms' balance sheets -- there's just not enough concern out there.

While some people are calling for Dow 11,000 or 10,000, the majority of people out there seem to think this is just a brief setback for our grand country, inevitably bound to rebound in 2009 and beyond.

That's just plain silly. We've committed so many economic sins and partaken in so much leverage and excess, it's bound to come crashing down all around us. So, why not now, especially now that all the variables have aligned to created the perfect economic storm?

Don't get me wrong. Just as I said way back in early March, I have no idea nor do I really care if we're going to have a financial collapse.

What matters to me is getting investors to stop thinking so traditionally. Recognize that 50% of stocks fall each year (your odds of success stink!), this dip could be different and the limited short and medium-term upside in these names does not warrant you hard-earned capital.

Of course you could learn short selling (as I said here and demonstrated here), but for those of you not comfortable with that strategy, consider buying only stocks breaking out to new highs -- stocks like Hercules Offshore Inc. (NASDAQ: HERO), FLIR Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: FLIR), Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) (which I recommended back in April here), China North East Petroleum (OTCBB: CNEH) and Challenger Energy Corp. (AMEX: CHQ).

Disclosure: Long CNEH.

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund