Time to Buy Financials?

Is there actually a global credit crunch? Is there a major economic crisis in the making as a result of the US sub-prime mortgage market? I don’t think anyone really knows but if I was a betting man I’d bet YES to the above two questions. Ok, so now that we’ve established that there might be a legitimate credit crunch what do we do? Panic? Sell all our holdings? Never buy another stock? That might work for some people but what I’d suggest is scan the market, identify which sectors and companies are taking the biggest hits and evaluate whether or not these out of favour stocks might be a good fit for your portfolio. The recent market declines are eminiscent of 2002 when I picked up TD. With many of the Canadian banks hitting 52 week lows I think that the time might be near for Canadian investors to get their fingers back on the buy button. Remember...BUY ON FEAR, SELL ON GREED.