What is working nowadays?

The market is in turmoil with increasing end of the world kind of feeling hitting everyone in the market. We are currently in a situation when emotion conquering logic, or an emotion-driven market. Forget about the two months relentless nonstop selloff. Just ask yourself if the fundamentals have suddenly dramatically changed overnight purely because Fed chair Powell didn't send a comforting message that Street wanted to hear? I bet no one would believe that logically. Nevertheless everyone still just wanted to sell amass in the last two days! Right now it is a rare time when there seems nothing is working if you are long anything.  
TA is useless at the moment as no logic one can follow anymore. Yesterday, put/call ratio reached 1.83, the highest reading since it was tracked back in 1995. Today's another hash selloff would likely push it even higher. So the pessimism has made an extreme history now in terms of this indicator. I'm pretty sure hardly anyone would consider buying right now. That's the time, as a contrarian, I'm actively buying for short term trading purposes with average down. Even though buying during panic is never a comfortable thing and actually more like "pinching your nose, closing your eyes and just buying it" kind of effort, I think this is the moment a small risk may be rewarded enormously with a snap back that may occur at any moment and if so, will be very violent and powerful. 

Of course, I don’t want to be surge-coating the terrible market reality at the moment.  

As of mid-October, in the S&P 500...

• 250 stocks were down 20% or more from their all-time closing highs (adjusted for splits and spinoffs).
• 162 were down at least 30% from their all-time highs.
• 113 were down at least 40% from their all-time highs.
• 69 were down at least 50% from their all-time highs.

You may hardly think there will be anything that can make money right now but believe or not, there is. Per some work I have seen from my sources, there is an elite group of stocks - each also a member of the S&P 500 - that is up more than 5% in 2018. I’m sure you want to know what stocks that are so strong to go up against the bearish overall market. It should not be a big surprise to you if you follow my blog closely. I’m talking about the so-called Dividend Aristocrats! These are the stocks that have really great fundamentals and have paid dividends nonstop for over 25 years or longer. These are the ones that will usually shine during bear markets and they can make you rich, really rich without much of your efforts! If you want to know why, it is worth rereading my blogs here and here.  

You may not believe but two years ago, Fidelity did a study and they found a theme. The people who didn’t touch their portfolios did the best; those with the owners who were either dead or unaware they had an account.  This is very similar to what a DRIP is supposed to do: you just buy those quality dividend stocks (better dividend growth stocks) and then forget about it. Of course I’m not really telling you to totally forget about your stocks as you still need to pay attention to see if there is a big change in the fundamentals of your companies. But generally speaking, if your long term dividend stocks have no problems in its fundamentals and are still churning out dividends year after year, then leaving your positions alone and buying more when they are down or simply via DRIP is the best way to accumulate wealth over time. Here are a few stocks worth considered although please don’t just take it as my recommendations. Do your homework and make up your own mind what to buy!