The New York Times (registration required) decided to promote the notion that small investors are "safer" in the current stock slide. Here are four reasons why I am convinced that this argument is hokum:

• Big funds are scrambling for liquidity and if they own stocks, they will sell them. While I agree that hedge funds and other institutional investors have been driving this market, that does not mean that the big players' market moves don't affect small investors. That's because the big funds are getting cash calls from their investors and from the banks that let them leverage up. And if they have stocks, they will sell them to raise cash. This will hurt small investors.
• Small investors fled stocks after the dot-com crash and piled into real estate. After losing parts of their shirts investing in dot-com stocks during the 1990s, individual investors shifted gears and put money into real estate. This worked well for a while. But when the real estate market started to tumble in 2006, these small real estate investors got burned some more. The mortgage-related problems of the big funds are hurting the small investors' real estate values even more by cutting off mortgage money. Banks foreclosures are throwing more real estate into the market which further depresses home prices.