This is great news for investors, says J. Cristoph Amberger. “History has proven time and time again that the seeds of wealth are sown during market crises… by buying good companies at crash valuations.”

He recommends investors buy shares of Ford Motors (NYSE:F), Alon (NYSE:ALJ), Stewart Enterprises (NASDAQ:STEI), General Electric (NYSE:GE), General Motors (NYSE:GM) and General Mills (NYSE: GIS) now.

This from Today’s Financial News:

The worst crash since 2001… 1987… 1937. As the National Debt Meter ran out of digits on Time Square earlier this week, the comparisons of the current crash with earlier catastrophic events are on a sliding scale backward.

Tomorrow morning, they may compare today’s performance to 1929.

And yet it doesn’t quite feel like anything’s amiss. Stores are abundantly full of goods. So are the parking lots in front of them and the bags of supermarket shoppers. And as I was stopped at a red light driving my daughter to her violin lesson yesterday, I couldn’t help but marvel at the Latin American construction workers putting the last touches on a new Cheesecake Factory in a brandspanking new addition to our mall… across from a bransdpanking new complex of apartmnts they’re finishing.

Next to me, a college girl in a $30,000 Mini Cooper was yakking it up on her cellphone, wearing $200 Jackie-O shades with lenses like saucers.

How odd, I couldn’t help thinking. We’re in a war that we’re unaware of in our daily lives… and we’re in a market crash nobody but the talking heads seem to notice.

Yet.

This is going to change today. Come Monday, companies all over America will start laying off people. It’s a reflex, and a natural one. Portfolio valuations have been destroyed by up to 20% on real estate… and 50-60% on stock portolios. Even if the destruction of value is mostly theoretic for most people who don’t trade daily, it’s a chiller.

Come next week, we’ll see a spike in new unemployment filings. We’ll see a downturn in spending… and a collapse in company earnings across the board that will last through January… and probably well into the first quarter of 2009.

Now, my general recommendation is not to panic during market downturns like this. To the contrary, history has proven time and time again that the seeds of wealth are sown during market crises… by buying good companies at crash valuations.

This is exactly what you need to be doing over the next couple of months. Buy judiciously and in controlled quantities, mind you… maybe by investing a fixed amount in stocks every week. Set aside fifty or 100 bucks of beer money… skip the kids’ video games, don’t allow them to buy another CD or iTune… cut down on their Christmas list… take the money you’d spend on pizza or lunches until Christmas… and religiously invest it in stocks.

Buy shares of Ford Motors (NYSE:F)…. refiner Alon (NYSE:ALJ)… “death services” provider Stewart Enterprises (NASDAQ:STEI)… buy General Electric (NYSE:GE) and General Motors (NYSE:GM) and General Mills (NYSE: GIS).

Buy them share by share. Instead of coffee… instead of gum… instead of your daily newspaper. WALK INSTEAD OF TAKING THE BUS. Buy $10 worth at a time… heck that buys you five shares of Ford today. Buy stocks at prices your father wishes he had bought them for back in the seventies.

But buy them gradually… and be prepared to experience some despair even then: No stock is ever cheap enough that you can’t lose another 90% of your principal!

Let’s not make any mistakes about it: Times will be tough. Your own wife will tell you you’re crazy. So compromise: Make sure you have cash on hand. Easier said than done, in many families: So cut down on expenses.

Keep the kids home for a semester rather than hand over tens of thousands of dollars to some college next term. Think their degree in Chicano Poetry or “International Relations” is important? Not if nobody’s hiring! Nobody cares!

Instead, take 10% of the tuition you saved and buy stocks in their names.

Did I say it often enough? Stop buying useless things: Start buying stocks! Start buying — and don’t stop! — NOW!

If you stay employed, keep paying into those 401(k)s and 403(b)s. In fact, max out your contributions. Invest for the long term.

And for crying out loud… don’t start buying gold now. Buy a gun instead!

The markets are wreaking havoc not only with your retirement nest egg, but with the balance sheets of hedge funds and the billionaires who’re propping them up. In the weeks ahead, dozens of funds will close. There will be a run on on principal. Funds will sell off everything they’ve hoarded over the past six years. Oil. Molybdenum. Copper. Indium. And gold.

Today is the turning point in global economic expansion. Be prepared to suffer. But think ahead: Over the next three months, the seeds of great fortunes will be sown. Cash is king in the coming weeks. But part of that cash needs to be converted into capital.

Source: Cancel Christmas! Crash will squeeze economy… and create opportunity for legacy wealth

More from Laura:

Let’s assume for a moment that the deal with SCI doesn’t go through. What will happen with the company? Will Stewart Enterprises, Inc. continue the profitable, dividend-producing advances they’ve achieved so far this year?

Last week, I drove through neighborhoods still scarred by Hurricane Katrina. My destination was the large office building housing Stewart Enterprises, Inc. in Jefferson, La. My mission: To meet with the top brass of the company… Thomas J. Crawford, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Martin R. de Lauréal, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations.

Right off the bat, I noticed that the interaction between the two men is dynamic. They appear to compliment each others’ strengths: With 30 years at Stewart, de Lauréal has a historical and reflective viewpoint about the company and its values. Crawford has been with Stewart less than two years and has a more clear and direct business focus.

As de Lauréal phrased it, Crawford has brought “fresh DNA” to the company.

Sound financials

The third quarter for Stewart brought a 12% increase in net earnings. I asked Crawford to elaborate:

“Our indicators were really pretty good on all fronts compared to the same period of the previous year. In a tough environment, we were pleased with what we achieved. As a matter of fact, the margin progression all the way from sales to net income was very strong.”

When asked if a key reason for the company’s success during a volatile economy is the recession-proof nature of the market, the CEO was careful in his response. He said: “The industry is recession-resistant. I don’t know if anything is recession-proof.”

(And certainly, since my meeting with the folks at Stewart, the stock price has dropped over 8% — right along with the markets.)

The main drive to their business is what they term “at need” services that start when a death occurs. And it’s that kind of demand that continues… and will continue… to expand.

Crawford freely admitted that that didn’t mean their business wasn’t affected by the grim economic outlook: Another quick look at Stewart’s 3rd Quarter Financials shows a drop in preneed cemetery sales. To industry outsiders “preneed” services are those arrangements made before necessity dictates.

A recessionary economic environment understandably results in a deferment of funeral services from preneed to “at need”.

Experience matters

But with almost 100 years of doing business under their corporate belt, what survival skills has Stewart picked up along the way?

According to Crawford, the company has continued to build through the years from a very humble origin. He gave credit to Frank B. Stewart Jr., the current Chairman of the Board and grandson of the company’s founder, and his powerful and positive vision of the business.

“Before I came to the company, Stewart Enterprises was the only business in this [death services] sector that I invested my own personal funds in. I liked the people and what they stood for… and I thought they had good basic business principles that would last.”

That doesn’t mean the company hasn’t had its bad spells. They learned a lot from an aggressive acquisition period they went through in the 1990s. The main lesson, that rapid growth has to be managed.

A clear long-term vision

As de Lauréal explained, “The fundamentals are irrefutable… you, me and everybody we know will die. So those needs don’t change if the market’s up or down.

“Because it’s such a long-term business, we take a long-term view. And so it’s not just the next 90-day report card that we’re focused on to drive our decisions.

“We’ve been in the ‘at need’ cemetery business since 1910. We’ve been selling preneed [services] for 65-70 years. Where some of our competitors move in and out of [the different aspects of] the business, we’ve tended to have a more consistent long-term focus.

“And finally, 30 or so years ago we got in the funeral business. We realized that all the consumers know is their loved one died… and they need someone to help them deal with that. They don’t know there is a different business on the funeral side and on the cemetery side. Combining the two just made a whole lot of sense – not to sound crass, but one-stop shopping… it’s convenient.”

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