Sure things die fast on Wall Street.

Take Wednesday, when Goldman Sachs reported better-than-expected results prior to the opening, prompting many pros on TV’s morning business shows to predict a strong, up market that day. They spoke as though it was practically a sure thing.

It wasn’t. The Dow tumbled 108 points as Goldman Sachs declared banks would have to raise $65 billion in new capital.

In response, money manager Tom Postin quipped: “This isn’t a stock market any more; it’s a shock market.” With bulging cash reserves of about 38%, the highest ever in his portfolio, which now stands at $224 million, he says he is more jittery than he’s been in years. “The consumer is bleeding pretty badly,” he says, suggesting to him that a prolonged period of slow or no economic growth is a very real possibility. “I’m also seeing steady erosion in cheap stocks with good stories that should be going up, not down,” he says. “You now have fear and emotion running the market, not logic. It tells me stock prices are going lower, maybe not a lot lower, but the path of least resistance seems down.”

Like many of his peers, Mr. Postin, who runs Los Angeles-based P&W Partners, is also worried about the next shoe to drop. “I don’t know if it will be related to the dollar, oil, more bank write-offs, or earnings shortfalls, but I suspect it’s coming,” he says. “The market tells you that. I don’t know how many more shocks are in the wings, so I’m heavily in cash. I know I’ll lag any rally, but I would rather be safe than dead.”

He is one of three pros who believe the beaten-up market faces a steady diet of difficult times that will drive stock prices lower in the months immediately ahead. Another is a $555 million New York hedge fund, Balestra Capital Partners, one of the Street’s most prolific 2007 performers. Thanks to a bearish strategy, it was up a spectacular 199%, and is up again this year between 5% and 10%.

“We haven’t skirted a recession, which could be moderate to severe,” a senior analyst and a member of Balestra’s investment policy committee, Ryan Atkinson, tells me. Among the market’s major problems, he sees the likelihood of a pretty severe consumer recession, driven in part by rising unemployment, higher food and gas costs, and rapidly rising debt levels, plus a deleveraging of the banking system relative to equity, which will inhibit banks from making loans and limit their ability to drive up asset values as much as they’ve done in the past. Factor in as well, he says, his expectations of a dramatic downturn in earnings and ongoing credit woes, and he concludes that “the bear-market rally is over” and that stock prices will drop at least 10% from current levels by year-end.

At the moment, Balestra is heavily short (a bet on falling prices) both credit instruments and stocks, notably in the ultra-cyclical and technology sectors. “Presently, there’s not much we like on the long side,” Mr. Atkinson says. That includes the overseas markets, as the performance of foreign equities is highly correlated with that of U.S. stocks. The fund likes gold, although it notes the precious metal is currently in a consolidation phase. As for energy, although bullish long term, it currently rates the group as overextended, relative to fundamentals.

If you’re hopeful of a sustained, robust rally anytime soon, don’t hold your breath, a former Goldman Sachs strategist, Fred Dickson, says. “We’re going through a very prolonged bottoming process,” he says, reflecting what he says he believes will be a couple of crummy economic quarters ahead. Mr. Dickson, the chief investment strategist of D.A. Davidson & Co. in Great Falls, Mont., spoke with me from the snowy Cascade Mountains in western Oregon, and he says he sees an equally cold spell for investors — a choppy, volatile period ahead for the Dow, which he says could drop during the next few months to the 11,500-11,600 range from yesterday’s close of 12,063.09.

Although arguing the market is discounting much of the economic slowdown and that the worst of the credit crisis is over, he worries about a number of potential events he says could wreak more havoc in the market. One of them is more aftershocks (big losses and write-offs) from the banking system. Another is his belief America is in the early stages of a recession and that the stimulus checks will be insufficient to turn the economy around. Likewise, he points to sharp consumer cutbacks in services because of higher prices at the gas pump, such as putting off dental visits and holding off on oil changes.

The bottom line, as he sees things right now: “We really don’t have enough juice in the engine to get the market going.”

dandordan@aol.com