cfran...@gmail.com

That's painful, but why in the world would you have been long on
Bear?  Remember, you can make money on both sides of a trade.  You
could have easily made $50K today by being short.  NEVER try to pick a
bottom.  It's not worth it.

If you were long because you believed the CEO a couple of days ago,
you just learned a lesson that you should always keep with you on
every trade:  Management (especially in financial firms) will ALWAYS
do what's best for them, not you, and you CANNOT trust them.

Seriously, if you have $100K (or now $50K) or more to invest, don't go
after the challenging stocks.  There are many great companies that
continue to chug along making money that have been dragged down by the
general downturn.  Find them and profit.