For those blindly following the Street’s party line, there’s a good chance they could be joining the line into the poorhouse.

Recent examples of this phenomenon are the widely touted dot-com craze of the early 2000s and the rush to real estate in recent years. In both cases, investor losses were tremendous.

The latest party line: The worst is over for the nation’s roughly 80 million stock players following the avalanche of panic selling that pounded markets around the globe last week. A sunny second half lies ahead, and this is a good time to buy stocks because they’re so cheap.

Key reasons: The Federal Reserve’s recent string of rate cuts, another of which is expected Wednesday, and the president’s proposed $145 billion economic stimulus package, both of which are designed to bail out America’s ailing economy and prevent a recession.

Not buying the party line are five pros who argue the wild rollercoaster ride is far from over and more pain lies ahead.

One is Oppenheimer & Co.’s chief investment strategist, Michael Metz. “We may be close to a short-term bottom, but we’re looking at a painful recession, the worst ever in the postwar period, that should last into 2009,” he tells me. Over the near term, Mr. Metz sees a market rally, given the Fed’s rate cut, but he predicts the temporary upswing will evolve into a significant decline that will drag the Dow down about 1,000 points by May.

A market analyst at Weiss Research of Jupiter, Fla., Tony Sagami, offers a more ominous outlook. He views last Tuesday’s volatile, ulcer-producing showing — a 464-point early morning plunge in the Dow before an eventual loss on the day of 128.11 points — as a sign of what’s ahead. “You can sum up in one word — pain,” he says. Citing such additional woes as a further weakening of the housing market and implosion of the credit markets, he predicts another vicious drop in the Dow of 2,000 to 3,000 points before year-end.

“The Fed easing is not going to help that much,” Mr. Sagami says. “The real estate and credit bubbles have to be wiped out and that’s going to take years.” His provocative strategy: “I’d be a buyer of non-dollar denominated stocks and a seller of everything else.”

A veteran stockbroker at Kern, Suslow Securities, Malcolm Lowenthal, also refuses to buy the Street’s party line. “Common sense tells you there’s a lot more to hit the fan,” he says, pointing to the likelihood of additional huge writedowns at financial institutions, further housing decay, the possibility of a major debacle in credit cards, and the fallout from a rapidly slowing economy. “At some point the chaos will be over, but that could take another year and in the interim we’re going lower,” he says.

Overseas, a money manager at Hong Kong-based HK Investments Ltd., Selwyn Ortz, notes a major international worry is that “the president’s economic rescue package will turn out to be impotent, falling far short of staving off a recession,” in turn triggering a host of further economic slowdowns around the globe.

San Francisco money manager Gary Wollin, who runs nearly $100 million of assets under the banner Gary Wollin & Co., sees “another big leg down, perhaps a further drop in the Dow of 300 to 400 points.” There’s just no need to put money to work in the next 30 days because there’s still a lot of nervousness out there that could easily drive stock prices lower, he says. The manager, who expects America’s economic problems to worsen, has about a third of his clients’ assets in cash.

In response to the Fed easing, Mr. Wollin insists nothing much has changed. He considers the Fed action more of a backstop, designed to prevent the gigantic market declines that have occurred in Europe and Asia.

Still, he says, if you look a year out, certain stocks are attractive. In particular, he points to Kohl’s, Procter & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson. For investors willing to take more of a risk, he says IBM, Microsoft, and Intel “look awfully cheap.”

On the other hand, Mr. Metz says he would sell anything to do with discretionary spending by the consumer. He adds that he would shun retailers, financials, and real estate, especially commercial.

On the buy side, he favors select North American oil production and exploration companies, theorizing that a number of them will be snapped up by energy biggies bent on expanding their reserves. Four names are favored, Anadarko Petroleum, Pioneer Natural Resources, Chesapeake Energy, and XTO Energy

“Dan, how do you personally see the market?” Marcus Lewin asks via e-mail. I say, everyone agrees we’re in for economic hardship ahead; that’s what falling stock prices are all about.

dandordan@aol.com