After one of the worst years for investors in at least 70 years, it is time to look forward once again. After having collectively spent far too long lamenting the financial panic that finally buckled even the soundest of investments in 2008’s final quarter, we must come to terms with the fact that we cannot go back in time and move to 100% cash at just the right time. Instead, we look where we are today. We take stock of our financial situation — cash in the bank, employment stability, years to retirement — and then look at our investment options.

I have spent the last few months collecting as much information as possible as to what approach to take now. My general plan, tailored to the specific needs of clients, is as follows:

(1) Maintain a core group of stock holdings representing companies and industries that supply the world with things we need, such as healthcare, energy and physical materials. We will largely avoid buying things people might want but can do without.

(2) Keep cash at relatively high levels and slowly deploy that cash into companies that stand to recover the most if the recession ends by the latter half of 2009, including selected retailers with excellent balance sheets and well-managed industrials trading at single digit price earnings ratios.

(3) Monitor the overall financial markets for signs of both true market stability and recovery as well as incipient inflation. At this point, remaining cash can be deployed in more classic value investing situations as well as into vehicles designed to protect against inflation, such as precious metals, international companies, and, in appropriate cases, inflation protected bonds.

2009 stands to be a better year than 2008 for investors. But maybe the question to ask yourself is if 2009 is your ultimate planning focus or instead is it the next five, ten, or even twenty years of wealth preservation and creation.

Maybe our first instinct is to go to all cash for the next unknown number of months or even years in the hopes of avoiding further pain. But what if a reticence to get back involved results in missing a sustainable move up in markets and in specific companies that, having put the worst behind them but still undervalued, begin once again to create meaningful cash that is transferred to its shareholder owners through dividends or price appreciation?

The losses of 2008 will not be recovered easily or quickly. But the overall structure of the U.S. economy has not been radically altered from the general model since World War Two. Yes, a credit bubble artificially inflated financial markets and created imbalances that exploded in investors’ faces. We remain, however, a nation of incredible wealth, abundant human capital, and structural stability. In this environment, stocks will work over time as they have worked every time.

In this tumultuous atmosphere, Arrival Capital stands ready to work through all your pending financial issues and concerns. For some, this may mean taking additional cash out of the market. But for many, this will mean having an identifiable plan of action to once again assess financial options and take advantage of all opportunities to prudently construct an investment portfolio designed to weather the storm and then produce meaningful wealth for our clients.