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7,162.90 was the key number today on the Nikkei.

One word:

OUCH!

Or if we want to pay our respects to the Japanese:

ITAIIIIIIII!!!!!!

Ironically, currency is doing excellent with the yen at 92.9.  In some ways, it's a bit of a shame that I'm NOT going to be working in Japan just for the currency ratio.  But that can go both ways.

Now, here's my opinion of things right now:

It's best to avoid working for large and public companies.  I think companies that depend on their stocks for money are going to do really poorly, even if revenue might look good (sounds counterintuitive, but I'm certain there are companies out there that follow this model).  Also, any companies that constantly are borrowing are going to be shot dead, since it sounds like credit is going to be hard to come by in the near future.

However, I think smaller companies might be the way to go.  Large companies tend to overhire, so your position at one of these companies is variably dependent upon your relationship to others.  But overall unless you're a bigshot inside of one of these companies, your position will be suspect.

Smaller companies won't hire as much and will demand more from you, but will depend on you far more than a larger company.  There's less barriers involved and more opportunities to grow.  I've seen companies that were in trouble and facing pay raise freezes, despite the fact that they still made a huge killing.  But people would see their benefits slowly eradicated and would sweat in fear of their jobs.

Certainly, smaller companies have equally high (or higher) risk because of the lack of profitability in many cases.  However, I would argue that you're more than likely going to lose your job in a larger company, since you're basically a cog.  It's not a pretty situation in either case, but these days, what is?