Choksey expects some amount of stability particularly in the Dow Jones and sees it at 9,800 levels. He feels that once this panic is consoled, we will see stability coming back into the markets and said that as of now it is difficult to take a call on whether mutual funds will come forward to sell in a big way.

8. Technical Analyst Ashwani Gujral feels investors should not short now as it does not make sense. "One will need to go short only if there is a decent bounce back. In the next few days, 3,800 will probably get tested once and that will give one a shorting opportunity. In this market, short positions are so high that any kind of global rate cuts could well take this market 150 points up, so shorting right now is not a good idea. Overall, unless the markets can stay above 4,000, it's a sell on a rally market."

Gujral feels real estate stocks have got beaten too badly to go down anymore. "During the software bull market, IT stocks got beaten up the most. There is hardly any scope for downside on realty stocks, so shorting them here does not make any sense."

So, which stocks can see the most downside from here? Gujral says: "The big boys are the only ones that still have some juice or some meat left. Stocks like Reliance, Larsen & Toubro, BHEL - those holy cows that no one ever touched -are going to get beaten up. The rest, or 80%, of the market is already bashed up enough, so they probably don't have as much downside now as largecaps have. Today, the index is down more because of largecaps. The midcaps are already done and over."

9. Technical Analyst, Rahul Mohindar of viratechindia.com feels the heavyweights look the weakest at this point. “We have seen Reliance Industries has been cutting off a lot. Whether I look at Reliance Capital or Reliance Industries — the Reliance pack looks particularly weak,” he said. Mohindar adds that real estate has been under pressure too and stocks like DLF have substantially big downsides even from current levels.

 “Metals and capital goods can tend to stabilise at lower levels. I would stay away from shorting a BHEL or Tata Steel at these levels,” adds Mohindar.

 On sectors whose stocks have reached a base-building stage, Mohindar picks power, capital goods and banking as sectors where one should not attempt to go short.

 For stocks that one can go short with, Mohindar goes with the real-estate pack. “There has been a tremendous damage today with both DLF and Unitech down over 9%. I still think DLF is likely to see levels of about Rs 275-280. So short-term, that’s a sell candidate. I would keep a stop loss at about Rs 318 on the stock.”

 10. Devangshu Dutta, Consulting Editor, Outlook, feels the technical problem is that the market is dealing with support resistance levels that were last seen in mid-2006. “People who bought Infosys at Rs 1275 two years ago and made money may or may not be prepared to buy it again at Rs 1275 and make money,” he said. “At this moment one has to reboot the entire analysis in terms of supports and resistances,” he added.

 “The prices we have been dealing with over the last one-and-a-half to two years are fairly meaningless,” said Dutta, adding that one can’t expect Reliance to go back to Rs 2200 this year. “So if you are going long at these levels, you are going long with hopes of very small short-term profits or you are buying with a one-two year investment perspective.”

 Dutta feels that Infosys at Rs 1250 or Rs 1275 levels will have support coming in and people will wait to get guided from the Q2 resu