Wow! Two stock market posts in one week! As many of you know, we've seen a dramatic decrease in the stock market (technically just equities) in the last two weeks. Many people have been screaming to sell everything and go all cash. And if you took their advice, you are probably better off today. Especially after yesterday's huge sell-off. But with a huge sell-off comes a really nice buying opportunity! You see most people sell their stocks or equity positions at the wrong time: when markets are already markably on the way down or worse at the bottom of the cycle. Instead, they should be selling before fear sets in and the selling begins. Conversely, people also tend to buy stocks and equities at the wrong time, and that wrong time is around about the time when the markets are hitting quarterly or yearly highs.

What you should be doing as an investor is buying stocks right now, or very soon from now as stocks begin to hit their lows for the year or, even better, lows over a multi-year timeframe. Warren Buffett prescribes to the fact that you should buy the fear when he was quoted as saying "be greedy when others are fearful". Many others follow this path, and it works. If you have a hard time understanding it, just think about what you would do if your favorite store began a clearance sale. Would you buy at the lowest prices possible, or think to yourself "I'll wait until the prices go back up before I buy"? If you have the funds, you would of course buy your goods at the clearance price, right? Same psychology should work in buying stocks.

While some stocks are falling for good reasons, there are many that have fallen just because of the gloom and doom surrounding the American debt crisis or maybe even due to fear over the Euro-zone and their problems. But there are other companies, good American companies, that have released fantastic earning over the last few weeks, yet have still fallen to incredibly low prices. Not because those companies have bad fundamentals, but just because of the environment.

So I wanted to highlight my TOP 5 stock picks that I have on my radar today. Stock of companies that look great as far as past earning go, but also companies that look good in the face of this huge market correction that we are all facing this morning. These are all long plays, not short term investments. But I expect that a couple of them will pop back fairly quickly from the recent extreme drops in the market.

AZO - Autozone is a good choice for a company that will do well even if the US economy does put its toes into a double dip recession. It's the ultimate bargain shopper's dream in the car and car parts market in that when an economy sours for the average worker, that worker will not be looking to purchase a new car. They will instead look to fix the car or cars they already own. This happened with Autozone when the first recession hit, and earning have been climbing ever since. If you take a look at their chart, you will see that it has dipped right along with the rest of the market during the debt crisis. However, it should climb right back up.

CAT - Caterpillar is a fantastic international business that may take a beating in the US if orders for new equipment stalling if a new recession begins. However, being an international business, Caterpillar has a great habit of finding new business in emerging markets that need and want their best of breed equipment. While CAT hasn't hit it's low of late 2010 yet, and may have further to fall, I expect they will rebound. If nothing else, Caterpillar's dividend is still incredibly strong at 46 cents/share. Meaning they are still paying quite handsomely to loyal investors.

BAC - Everybody was with me until I put Bank of America down, and I admit that this is my speculative play. Bank of America's earnings were not good during the last quarter due to the company needing to settle some lawsuits. And they may have more to go with the fallout of their acquisitions of Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. But the precipitous fall of BAC over the last few months is really just due to the debt crisis in America, and really nothing more. If the markets begin to either feel better about the debt crisis or forget about it, Bank of America should rise back up. At least to the $14 mark, giving you a nice profit if you get in around $8-$9.

F - I really don't know what is going on with Ford. Earning weren't spectacular, but they were not bad either. Yet the stock price continues to drop. Is it the pending union talks that Ford has coming up, and maybe traders are expecting Ford to have problems in that area? I don't know, but the price for Ford just seems too low for a high quality American company. A company which did not take Federal bailout funds during the 2008-2009 crisis. Which makes it funny that because they didn't, and because they did not file for bankruptcy, their union still has the ability to strike against Ford while their competitors unionized workforce does not have the ability to strike. Ford is doing everything right, but is still paying for it in investment returns. I think the stock goes higher and if the company is able to avert a strike, the stock should go higher much quicker!

MSFT - MicroSoft is the safe play in this list. Mr. Softee, as it's called by traders, has made a habit of just staying within a certain price channel of the mid-$20's to the very low $30 mark. Paying a dividend of 16 cents per share keeps it a safe bet as does the amount of cash the company has on hand. The earning from last quarter beat estimates, and if they can find a way to start beating Google a bit in search, they may find themselves surpassing that price channel. But regardless, if you want a safe place for your money, a stock that won't sink much but won't rise too much, MicroSoft is probably a good bet.

Do you have any particular stocks that you think are trading too low right now? If so, post them in the comments, and let us know why you think they are low. I know there are many more than those listed above, so I'm interested in hearing others ideas, too!

As I finished writing this post this morning, the jobs report came in from the US Labor Department. While not fantastic, the numbers of 156,000 new jobs pretty much doubled estimates forecasts of 75,000. Which means if you are reading this on Friday, August 5th, you are probably already seeing the stocks listed above pop just a bit!

B. Daniels is the lead review expert with Find Cheap Bargains. B. was more than likely the person responsible for the hands-on review of every product on the site. He also spends time searching for sale bargains when not conducting and writing the reviews.