"DOW Futures down over 700 points at one point tonight." okiedo, you did a heck of a job of answering your own question quite unequivocably -- no exemptions for North America, but hopefully, after horrible teeth nashing most all day if not all day tomorrow, hope for a stabilization and beginning of a recovery by sometime next week.

The danger with POET is if folk who are on margin get called and have to sell something, it may be POET. That's going to be happening a whole lot tomorrow. Interesting to watch from a historical perspective, but also fine to never tune in at all and wait till the day's over to see the extent of the devastation. Tomorrow, it will be good not to be mainstream, I think.

And if you have cash, you might be able to catch a bargain on some really good stocks tomorrow; I don't have to worry about that. But I sure wouldn't go in till the last few minutes, markets will obviously open way down, and might look like they are recovering at some point two or three hours in, but that may be a head fake.

One thing I'm confident about, the more the financial media makes of it, the less the effect will be.