I hope you are enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Depending on who you are, this holiday period will be spent differently:

• This is the Super Bowl of retail weekends, and retailers are going flat out to make a year’s worth of profits in just a few days.
• The upper floors at major banks may be burning the midnight oil to get a handle on their exposure to the Dubai $80 billion “stand still” default on its debt.
• For investors, this becomes a quiet period to reflect and develop a plan for the weeks and months ahead.

All of us want to make a lot of money with the least-possible risk. But the doom talk should frankly freeze your investment decision processes like a deer caught in the headlights.