"Sail On, Sail On, Great Ship, Titanic!"

Bargain hunters:

"No, we're not getting out of the market. We're absolutely in it for the long term," said Eileen Shephard, a director of the Sacramento chapter of BetterInvesting, a national nonprofit that promotes education for individual investors.

..."Our little group is staying put, but it's not easy to watch the market fall so quickly in just a few days," said Marcia Wilson-Farmer of Folsom, a member of a five-person group that meets weekly.

It was a year ago today that the Dow Jones industrial average reached its peak of 14,164. Since then, the Dow has fallen nearly 5,000 points. It closed Wednesday at 9,258 – another down day in what seems like an endless stream of down days.

..."Our last meeting wasn't pretty. … It was quite uproarious," she said. "Still, we haven't dropped nearly as much as the stock market as a whole and other sectors. We're holding our own. But we want to be more than holding our own."

..."If you're a long-term investor, you really shouldn't panic now. If you take your money out now, you have no chance to regain it," she said. "The stock market has had all kinds of bumps along the way in the past and come back, so you have to hold steady now."

Crosta said it's also a good idea "to be patient and give the (federal) stimulus package a little time to get working."

..."Our club is looking at fundamentally sound stocks, companies that have been around a long time and are going to be around for many years, no matter what the market is doing right now," said Richard Long of Carmichael. "I guarantee you that people who get out now will regret it in a couple (of) years when the market is back up."