Fresno financial advisor Sandy Brown says investors reacted to the bailout package that apparently fell apart. "With the Democrats coming back and saying 'You know what? You guys from the big 3 need to go back to the table and come back with some more information,' and it looks like now it's not going to happen," Brown said. "That was definitely the cause for the selloff today."
Democrats say one in every 10 American jobs is somehow connected to the auto industry and Brown says their failures trickle down to the rest of the market in hidden ways. The same would be true if the valley's top industry took a major hit. "Someone who isn't affiliated with the Central Valley has no idea how many industries support ag" he said. "Water people, soil people and the pesticides and the chemicals -- all of those industries."
Despite the downturn, a few stocks seem to be thriving, including several in the discount retail industry. Dollar stores -- like Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and 99 Cents Stores have made big gains over the last year.
A few other companies selling necessities like food are also making some gains, and so is another discounter, Wal-Mart. "And Wal-Mart doesn't surprise me at all because regardless of your socioeconomic status, a lot of people shop at Wal-Mart," Brown said.
He said people are changing their shopping patterns to look for deeper discounts. But even discounters aren't a guarantee on Wall Street. Target stock is now worth half of what it was two months ago.
All of those stocks went down Thursday, even the apparently crash-resistant ones. A couple stocks that didn't go down: Ford and General Motors stocks both went up.
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