Buying stocks amid market crash: who dares?

Buying during the crash: Santander at €2.70 and "no bottom"

The cumulative drop has shifted the question from whether there is panic to what to do with it. Futures anticipate another red session—Nasdaq and S&P 500 falling around 2%—and opinions split in two: orders already placed on the sales and the certainty, on the other side, that the worst is yet to come. Is it time to buy stocks during a fall? It depends on who you ask and how much ammunition remains in reserve.

Where is the market bottom? No one dares to date it

No one knows where the bottom is. The phrase is repeated so often it has ceased to be a warning and become a method: if the minimum is unprovable, better to stagger entries. Catching the exact inflection point is gambling, some argue; others assume there is still room to fall and that next week will bring more blood. Some won't look at the stock exchange again until a 50% crash. Others buy while the market drops, without ceremony.

The result is a market falling with buyers inside. This explains part of the intraday noise and those rebounds that last hours before fading.

Periodic contributions, 25% blocks, and ammunition for lower levels

For long-term investors, the prevailing recipe is drip-feeding. Periodic contributions that buy more when prices drop: the DCA system turns each segment of decline into a slightly cheaper purchase. It is not a bet that this hits bottom tomorrow, but that in a few years today's price will seem reasonable.

The most cited variant is mechanical: divide available funds into four 25% blocks, release the first, and reserve the rest. If the market keeps falling, contribute what remains; if it rebounds strongly, let it run. Another option is staggering below the first package, with entries prepared at much lower levels—a car manufacturer below €20, and ammunition set aside for €15 and €10. The exact allocation, block by block, is what turns intention into a plan with rules.

Santander, Telefónica, and Renault: the usual magnets

Spanish investors return to the same places. Santander and BBVA concentrate many orders, with entry prices that months ago would have sounded like a joke: a buy in Santander at €3.18 allowed selling at €3.34 within 24 hours, and there are orders placed at €2.70. Telefónica appears at €5.47, Enagás at €19, and DIA at €0.078—though in the latter case, the drop is attributed to its own results, not the bicho.

Beyond the big names, the watchlist mixes renewables that had been rising for years and finally found their correction, a car manufacturer with an apparently solid 2019 balance sheet, a chemical company with notable results, and cruise ship operators, where a forum user notes summer sales will take time to recover.

Cobi19 is secondary: debt is the problem

Here the diagnosis worsens. Part of the analysis argues the outbreak was merely the trigger for something structural: a globally interconnected economy leveraged to the hilt. If a company cannot produce, how does it pay its debts? And if it doesn't, how will its employees pay theirs? The reasoning ends at that house of cards no one wants to face directly.

To this argument adds a warning about supplies. Even before the Chinese PMI drop was confirmed, signals of supply issues circulated in exporting sectors, and in some businesses what is missing are not rare parts, but the very possibility of fulfilling orders. The conclusion is uncomfortable: offshoring all production leaves manufacturers at the mercy of third parties closing the tap.

Buying amidst cannon fire

The classic manual says the opposite of what the stomach dictates: buy when cannons roar and sell when violins play. Translated, stock markets usually turn well before news improves. If this ends up being a severe flu rather than a systemic crisis, central bank intervention could cause double-digit rebounds in a single session.

The doubt comes from the other manual, the herd mentality. If everyone is waiting for the crash to enter, what is left to discount? Buying when everyone plans to buy is an uncomfortable way of trinc the majority.

Obsession with the Ibex under scrutiny

Why insist on the Spanish index instead of the US one? Proximity and familiarity, answers one school: we know which companies are discussed because they are right here. Critics attribute it to investing based on hearsay. While major developed markets hit highs early in the year, Spain's chain of endless declines continues, and when it crashes, it does so harder than most.

With the bottom undated, orders placed, and central banks in reserve, the only shared certainty is that no one will sign off tomorrow saying today was the day.