Dow Drops Below 10,000; First Time Since Oct. '04

At the time of this writing, the DJIA is down to 9,836, having fallen nearly 500 points.

It sank in early Monday that despite the alarm spread over a need for "quick, decisive" action, the Bush administration's $700 billion (now $850 billion, when you include sweeteners) rescue plan won't work quickly to unfreeze the credit markets. Why?

Officials said that the aforementioned warnings of the bailout’s "urgency," the Treasury Dept. will not begin purchasing hundreds of billions in "bad" Wall Street assets until the middle of November.

This has led to investors pulling their money out of the stock market and into perceived "safer" havens, such as Treasury notes.

Don't fool yourself; this is not isolated to the U.S. Worldwide, markets were lower.

The Nikkei 225 closed down 4.25%. Europe's stock markets also declined, with the FTSE-100 down 6.3%, Germany's DAX down 8.3%, and France's CAC-40 down 8.8%.

However, the DJIA drop below 10,000 is perhaps the most important, as it breaks a "psychological barrier."

Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research said:

"This is a psychologically important moment that we passed below the 10,000 level. But, the issues are worldwide. The fact is people are scared and the only thing they're doing is selling."

And there's no FDR to halt the fear by saying all we have to fear is fear itself. This is not over by a longshot.