Johnson & Johnson is an extremely stable company, well entrenched and diversified, with a rare “AAA” rating and unlike General Electric, they stick to their core competency and did not use that “AAA” to venture deep into finance. It is one of the rare traditional and profitable companies left. Seeing their retrenchment got me a bit worried. There is an element of positive news inside this development in that, they are positioning themselves for the long term rather than fighting fire as in most of the other companies. Hopefully a leaner and more competitive J&J will be able to show the route to recovery.

BTW GE just lost their AAA rating, not sure about the stable of companies of the Oracle of Omaha, but he did value his rating extremely. I still believe that equity will still prevail in the end. But the current crisis will take 5-10 years to clear up. A blip in the history of times but quite a painful period for the rest of us. J&J is a solid stock worth the picking, though not at this time. It is not often that I timed the markets, but abnormal situations call for abnormal measures.