My investment world leads me to deal with many brokers and I am constantly amazed at the bad advice that is so prevalent in the financial industry. I think many brokerage houses remain conflicted, try as they might to be otherwise.

Here is the latest example to reach my doorstep. We have personal assets with Charles Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW) and they publish an in-house magazine for their clients called "onInvesting". In the summer 2009 issue listed under the heading of "Expert Insight" there is an article titled "How Sector Investing Can Work for You". I could not find a link to the story online. It is written by Brad Sorenson, CFA, director, Sector Analysis, Schwab Center for Financial Research.

This week saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average register its worst losses ever, extending October's reputation as a bad-news month for U.S. stocks. With banks failing domestically and abroad, and Iceland -- Iceland? -- on the verge of national bankruptcy, it's hard not to feel panicky about the state of the market.

In fact, not even market professionals are immune. On a routine visit to my dentist earlier this week, the good doctor informed me my blood pressure is high (yes, he's a very thorough dentist). My first response was, "Have you seen the market lately?"

It then occurred to me how much worse my hypertension might be if I didn't have the wisdom of market veterans to rely on each day at the office. With this in mind, I decided to survey a few of of my learned colleagues here at Schaeffer's Investment Research to see what advice they could offer you in the face of this unprecedented market turmoil.

Ryan Detrick, our senior technical strategist, notes that "It's all about a lack of confidence." (In light of the week's roller-coaster Dow ride, this seems to be the case for both bulls and bears alike.) Detrick explains that it's simple economic physics at work: "When you see banks going under in a matter of days, no one trusts anyone else to lend to them. This, of course, leads to a huge economic slowdown and in a very quick fashion."

However, he says, U.S. investors can at least indulge in a bit of schadenfreude. "The reality of the situation is, Europe is probably in worse shape than the U.S.," observes Detrick. "It seems like nearly every day Europe is bailing out another bank. We've had crises before, but this is the first one in our generation that has spread throughout the globe."

So, with panic sweeping the known universe, what's a trader to do? "Don't panic" seems like obvious advice, but our resident blogger and senior equities analyst, Nick Perry, finds that a bit trite. "I've lost count of how many times I've been told that 'now is not the time to panic,'" he says. "This bothers me for two reasons. One, is there ever really a time to panic? Two, it's like telling someone who's on fire to 'think cool thoughts.' In other words, it doesn't help."

I often spend a little time over at Blogmaverick.com, where Mark Cuban recently sought to give the world of blogging a little of his insightful perspective. It seems that Mr. Cuban finds little to respect in the world of blogging, or at least in the world of slipshod ,cookie-cutter blogging. Though I found Mark's blog entry a trifle difficult to read, which is quite unusual coming from him, I nonetheless agree with most of the body of his post. I especially agree with his assertion that just because a blog is backed by the name of a well-known media organization does not in itself render that blog worthy of special notice.

Mark Cuban wrote, "...newspapers having 'bloggers' is easily one of the many bad decisions that newspapers have made over the past 10 years." If newspapers are going in a wrong direction by producing blogs, perhaps they need to reinstall the title reporter and drop the title blogger to give a different perspective to the reader. If newspapers are using the term blog simply as a culture hook, then they have it all wrong and they're just selling their reporters short. I believe that I'm in agreement with Mark Cuban when I say that true reporters should be releasing content within some format other than blogs. Blogging is what I do, and I'll be the first to tell you that I'm no reporter. The titles are absolutely not interchangeable, though they may sometimes be used correctly in tandem.

If you take a look at the stories of great entrepreneurs – such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT)'s Sam Walton, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s Bill Gates, and Howard Schultz of Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) – you will see that they had the help of mentors and advisors.

After all, being an entrepreneur can be lonely, stressful and challenging. And it's often difficult to get solid advice.

"I can't overstate the importance of mentors in my life," said Ben Casnocha. Ben started his first business at 14 years old, and even wrote a book on his experiences, My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley.

So where do you find mentors? Ben recommends lots of networking. In fact, he considers the Small Business Administration's SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) a great resource (and it's free).

But be wary. Make sure you do lots of background research on the people you like. You might realize that they really aren't a good fit.

I'm not writing this piece for my associate bloggers here on BloggingStocks. The fact of the matter is that most, if not all of them are far better, more well versed and more professional than myself. I don't even consider myself a professional writer. Basically I'm a hack commentator with some creative potential. But be that as it may, I do know a thing or two about presentation, and if there's one thing I've learned about blogging is that the presentation is what garners the healthy numbers. So, for the aspiring and struggling bloggers out there who want to expand their potential, this one's for you.

I get quite a lot of my material from three major news services. United Press International, Associated Press International, and The Financial News Wire. The angle is that I tend to quickly skip past the stories that I know everyone else is reporting. I know what's being reported because I research that fairly well. So when I get down to sifting through the news to determine what I'll present to you, I already have a pretty well formed picture of what stories are not requiring another go around. Sometimes I do present a piece regarding a story that has been hashed over pretty well, but in those cases you'll notice that I don't just put out a carbon copy of the press release. In the cases when I grab onto a hot headline to present content to the readers, it is my purpose to give them more of a scoop of my opinionated brain matter than just another carbon copied dateline.

The crème de la crème of portfolio managers met up in New York to exchange investment ideas at the Ira W. Sohn Investment Research Conference last week. Presenters included turnaround expert Wilbur Ross, Joe Rosenberg who has managed money at Loews Corporation (NYSE: LTR) forever, Bill Miller of Legg Mason Inc (NYSE: LM) and Mason Hawkins, Chairman of Southeastern Asset Management.

Some of the highlights:

• General theme was favoring large cap over small cap
• Technology is coming back into favor in addition to healthcare
• Investors should avoid Asia

Mason Hawkins ended the conference not recommending individual stocks but focusing more on investment advisory prose: have the discipline to say no, be patient and wait for the right opportunity, be willing to stand on your own when no one agrees with you, and take advantage of other peoples fear and greed. That investment advice pretty much follows the thoughts of many of the presenters.

I may have mentioned previously that for some odd reason I often have the very daunting privilege of entertaining some deeply intriguing questions. The query put to me today was issued in form similar to this:

If I could virtually guarantee you that by following my instructions on when to buy and sell stocks you would reap a profit at least 70% of the time, would you listen to my instructions and follow them? The only catch is you have to be the first one to take action based on my advice.

This question was brought up in reference to Jim Cramer and the tone of the question was not nice. It was implied that something less than honorable might be taking place behind the scenes. I stand in Jim Cramer's defense (as if it's even required).

Although at times he annoys me with his on screen antics, I have never had cause to believe that Jim Cramer's prognostications encompassed anything less than good, solid business analysis, thorough historical trending and conservative (although sometimes very wrong) performance projections. I have never known Mr.Cramer to lie about anything and he backs up every claim he makes with experience and facts.

Wall Street, financial arbiter in the capital of the world, has amassed dozens of adages since the dawn of publicly-traded companies. Adages that -- while not proving to be 100% accurate for every historical case study -- nevertheless do contain substantial amounts of truth.

And one of Wall Street's adages is: "No one ever went broke, holding Coke."

That's The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO), not the bottler. Coke's shares closed Friday at $48.24 up 14 cents.

Sluggish sales, as well as competition from generic colas, and the U.S.'s trend toward the consumption of health-oriented, non-carbonated sports drinks, like Gatorade, have created a substantially different soft drink sector than a generation ago, when KO was dominant both domestically and internationally.

And that sluggishness has been reflected in Coke's stock price, which, for the most part, has been stuck in a $40-$55 range for about 6 years.

What in the world is a correction? I hate that term! The market would go up and down with no news at all. THAT'S RIGHT FOLKS. If there was no news whatsoever, no analysis, no weather change, no Oprah, Paris, Michael or Tom Cruise news, the market would not stay in the same place -- it's not possible. We had some down days and now we had some up days. So just chill out!

Yes, interest rates and oil prices affect markets. So do terrorism, disasters, the Fed and the Prez. However, the analysis you read on a daily basis should be read with great cynicism, unless of course it comes from Mr. Buffett or Mr. Munger (you already know I'm smitten by those guys) who actually know a thing or two and have the track record to back it up.

So I guess I will play the curmudgeon role on this blog and keep pounding on everyone to relax, invest and not speculate. Look for facts and not opinions whenever possible and enjoy the summer when markets often lag because there is lower volume seasonally and NOT because we are having a correction!

For additional recent Liber rants see: "Dividends are very sexy -- no joke" and "A bad rap for a bad market"

 And don't miss yesterday's: "Get out of junky investments so you can sleep well at night"