After weeks of speculation - Apple! Amazon! Nike! Toyota! -- all became clear today when General Motors Corporation's (NYSE: GM) exodus from the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) made room for... Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO). While perhaps not as sexy a name as, say, Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), it does add one more tech name to the venerable 30-stock average.

Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson released a statement noting that CSCO made the cut "because its communications and computer-networking products are vital to an economy and culture still adapting to the Information Age -- just as automobiles were essential to America in the 20th Century." So there's the connection!

Dow component Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) appears to be in for a rough day after reporting a first-quarter loss of 19 cents per share. This was the first quarterly loss for the earth mover since 1992. Moreover, a year ago, CAT earned $1.45 per share in the first quarter.

Excluding charges stemming from CAT's workforce reduction, the quarterly earnings would have totaled 39 cents per share -- far better than expectations. Quarterly sales dropped 22% to $9.22 billion, again topping the consensus estimate for $8.33 billion.

The glow is coming off yesterday's huge Fed rate cut. Just as I expected, the market gave back much of yesterday's huge gains.

Investors sent the Dow Jones industrial average down 293 points, or 2.36%, to 12,099.66, while the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 58.30, or 2.57%, to 2,209.66 and the S&P 500 tumbled 32.32, or 2.43%, to 1298.42. Market watchers, who were jubilant yesterday, were downright depressed today.

"This whole market is driven by fear right now,'' James Gaul, a portfolio manager at Boston Advisors LLC told Bloomberg News. "Investors are thinking more and more this will be a long and drawn out recession, and that pulls down commodity prices and energy prices.''

"Clearly there is fear. I would say the needle is pointing more toward fear than greed right now," said
George Shipp, chief investment officer at Scott & Stringfellow, in an interview with the Associated Press.

O.K, we get the picture. People are scared. Fear rules the day.

That's the case for now, but the funny thing is this fear will not last. The slightest good news will send the market skyward yet again.

You can get whiplash watching this market rise and fall.

We're in a rare moment in history where cash is king. That may sound like a cliche, but I think the 4% to 5% returns you can get in a money market account are very attractive compared to the risk you take by staying in stocks. My prediction is that the Standard & Poor's 500 could fall at least another 10% from here. I think the economy is weakening and the crisis in the credit markets will worsen from here.

As I explain in this video, I think this is not the time for a buy-and-hold strategy. But if you must stay in stocks, look at more defensive sectors like food, beverage and healthcare. Gold is another sector that could potentially provide a safe haven in the tough months to come.

Michael Panzner is a 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and currency markets and the author of Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes and The New Laws of the Stock Market Jungle.

Nearly all of the major stock market indices are "capitalization-weighted" (one notable exception is the Dow Jones Industrials Average, which is "price-weighted").

That means swings in the value of the largest constituent members have a proportionately greater influence on the price of the relevant benchmark than price changes in the shares of smaller companies.

In many cases, exchanges and financial services firms have also created "equal-weighted" versions of some of the more popular bellwethers (many of which also serve as the basis for certain exchange-traded funds, or ETFs).

With this type of structure, the equivalent percentage move in the price of a share of any company in the index, regardless of the firm's size, will have an identical impact on the value of the benchmark.

Because of the way each index is calculated, one can get a feel for whether or not a market trend has been broad-based, and thus "healthy," by examining the ratio of the price-weighted index to its capitalization-weighted equivalent.