At the moment, it’s only a Wall Street murmur, but the dreaded “P” word is beginning to crop up. No one is panicking yet, but the frightening prospect is growing by the day, some pros suggest, given the mounting market losses in early 2008 and the ongoing selling blitz hammering many sectors of the market — even on days of rising stock prices.

“The world’s not coming to an end, but on some days it certainly looks like it,” Marcus Raab of London-based Raab Associates says, capturing the mood. “No two ways about it: Sound, fundamental analysis is playing second fiddle to fear. I’m impressed with the market’s ability to suddenly swing from a loss to a big gain as it did Wednesday,” when the Dow rose 146 points, “but I wouldn’t rule out a panic at some point if the selling pressure doesn’t ease up.”

Actually, signs indicate that the small beginnings of a selling panic in the American market may already be under way, judging from the latest numbers from liquidity tracker TrimTabs Investment Research of Santa Rosa, Calif.

For example, in the week ended January 5, jittery investors unloaded more than $20 billion worth of stocks in American companies, TrimTabs estimates. About $10.3 billion of the sales were by equity-oriented mutual funds that invest solely in American securities, while nearly $9.9 billion were from exchange-traded funds that also invest only in companies based in America.

These are the highest weekly sales since TrimTabs began tracking equity inflows and outflows in 1998.

“The public is delivering a loud and clear message,” TrimTabs’s CEO, Charles Biderman, says. “It’s scared and it doesn’t want to be in the American stock market.”

Recent figures give credence to this observation. The latest American mutual fund sales represent an acceleration of December’s outflows, when investors dumped an estimated $24 billion worth of such funds.

It marked the eighth month in a row of net outflows for mutual funds.

International equity funds, usually a haven for U.S. investors when they’re fearful of the American market, also suffered sizable outflows in December, to the tune of $4.8 billion. It was the only American outflow of international stock funds last year.

TrimTabs’s president, Conrad Gann, reckons the brisk selling of both stock-oriented American and international mutual funds is apt to pick up steam, given their abysmal showing. Hefty declines were experienced by these funds in November and December, a combined two-month period in which American funds fell 11.3% and international funds skidded 14.6%.

Mr. Gann also takes note of a number of specific investor worries, chief among them declines in retirement portfolios, fears of a recession, the housing crunch, slowing growth in personal income, stagnant employment growth, and the weak dollar.

“It’s a difficult time to participate in American equities, since stock values fail to sufficiently reflect the weaknesses in the American economy,” he says.

As a result, he tells me, “for the near term, at least, the selling trend in these funds should continue.”

If there’s an encouraging note here, Mr. Gann points to a similar consecutive eight-month outflow of American funds that ended in 2002, an event that marked the bottom of the bear market.

Okay, let’s say the market’s crummy kickoff this year is worrisome to an investor. Barring a sale of all stocks owned, what’s the best way to protect against a further market slide?

“Dividend power,” veteran financial adviser Charles Allmon says, noting that, historically, companies without the protection of hefty dividend payouts plunge like comets in severe market shakeouts and do not bounce back quickly.

Mr. Allmon, the editor of the Growth Stock Outlook newsletter in Chevy Chase, Md., has put together a list of 11 companies that offer substantial cash payouts. With few exceptions, he notes, they have been boosting their dividends at a smart clip for many years.

The companies, each of which offers “considerable upside potential,” Mr. Allmon says, are as follows (their yields in parentheses): HSBC Holdings (5%), Bristol-Myers Squibb (4.1%), GlaxoSmithKline (4.1%), UST Inc. (4.1%), Central Virginia Bankshares (4%), RPM International (3.9%), Philip Morris (3.8%), Bank Hawaii (3.3%), Ennis Inc. (3.3%), Eli Lilly (3.2%), and Genuine Parts Corp. (3%).

The next couple of years, Mr. Allmon predicts, will see “a rough and tumble stock market.” His advice to investors: “Do yourself a big favor and study these 11 companies; they well may serve as a market prop.”

dandordan@aol.com