“Enough already, Calamity Dan! Your Monday column telling us the market dive had more to go was unduly pessimistic and ill-timed,” reader Marvin Loesser wrote me. “Are you trying to scare people? What makes you think the market is going to hell because of a couple of bad days? How about some feedback from the bulls?”

That column did not express my view but represented the observations of some pretty savvy pros who believe — with legitimate reason, I think — that the extent of the subprime debacle and other housing woes could wreak further havoc on the market.

In any event, some bulls say market fundamentals remain solid, that the plunge in stocks represents an excellent buying opportunity, and the market should wrap up the year at higher prices.

“I’d be a buyer here. It’s a good time to add to stock portfolios,” a bullish stock market guru, Elaine Garzarelli, tells me. “No need to run and hide — we’re simply going through a 4% to 7% correction in an ongoing bull market that should soon run its course.” She attributes the decline to too many bullish advisers (a good contrary indicator) and views stocks as undervalued, relative to interest rates.

Ms. Garzarelli expects economic growth to slow to about 2.5% in the next two quarters, from 3.4% in the first quarter. This slowdown, she notes, should prevent long-term interest rates from moving higher. This should rejuvenate the economy, benefit mortgage rates, and spur gross domestic product growth of more than 3% in 2008. To our guru, it all adds up to a 10% to 12% gain in the S&P 500 between now and year-end.

New stock purchases, she thinks, should focus on companies that can outstrip her projected 2008 earnings growth of 6% for the S&P 500. She favors the pharmaceutical, construction, and technology sectors, as well as the fast-growing emerging markets. She rates exchange-traded funds the best investment bets, notably Pharmaceutical Holders Trust (PPH), Select Sector Spider Trust (XLK), and iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM).

Another bull, liquidity tracker Charles Biderman, tells me, “The market hasn’t taken a siesta. It has just slowed temporarily and is ready to romp again.

“The full blown equities-selling panic was a signal to buy,” he says, referring to last week’s two-day plunge in the Dow of nearly 520 points. “Fear and ignorance took Wall Street lower and the only sellers are panicky hedge funds and the public. … Companies are not sellers, but buyers, at the rate of $2.7 billion a day.”

Likewise, he notes, insider selling is light, suggesting corporate America firmly believes stock prices are headed higher.

What about credit fears? “Overblown,” he says. Belittling widespread credit concerns, Mr. Biderman, chairman of TrimTabs Research of Santa Rosa, Calif., points to $250 billion worth of pending takeovers, which he says will all get done because they’re fully funded by the banks. “It’s ridiculous to think credit turbulence will end the bull market.”

Pointing to a rising economy spurred by global growth, with take-home pay for 140 million working Americans up 6.6% in the second quarter and up 8.8% since July 4, the financial press is so obsessed with subprime mortgage issues that it’s losing sight of how rapidly the American economy is growing, he says.

“When income and job growth is sharply on the rise, as it is now, it means there’s not going to be any housing bust,” Mr. Biderman says. When the worries evaporate — which he’s convinced they will soon — our bull believes stock prices should post a gain of about 10% or so from here by year-end.

(He may, of course, be right in his assessment of the credit markets, but none other than the chief of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, strongly disagrees, having recently warned losses from the subprime meltdown could reach $100 billion.)

Wachovia’s chief investment strategist, Rod Smyth, is another bull. “Since the S&P 500’s primary trend [its 200-day moving average] is still rising at a 22% annualized rate, we don’t believe the bull market has ended yet,” he noted in a commentary to clients the other day. He added that while last week’s decline opened the door to further downside or even a bear market, the most likely scenario is a resumption of the bull market at a less exuberant pace.

Mr. Smyth doubts a major credit crunch is on the way because, he observes, corporate America is generally not over-indebted outside the financial sector. In fact, companies have been aggressively paring down debt over the last several years, and total debt levels relative to cash flow have begun to rise only recently. Further, he notes, nonfinancial corporations’ net interest payments, as a percentage of cash flow at 7.9%, are less than half their peak levels of the past two decades, and at the low end of their 30-year range. Credit, Mr. Smyth believes, is simply being repriced at more rational levels as liquidity from central banks and the credit markets returns to normal from previously exuberant conditions.

Let’s say you buy the bull argument. What stocks can outperform the market the balance of the year? I put that question to another bull, Richard Moroney, editor of the Dow Theory Forecasts, an outperforming newsletter. His top picks: HelixEnergy, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Harris, McDonald’s, PepsiCo., ConocoPhillips, and Oceaneering International.

A word of caution, though: All too often, bulls are full of bull.

dandordan@aol.com