Depression is here again. So is there anything worth buying?

Nothing is certain in this worst of all worlds, say Tim Bennett and John Stepek. But here are five stocks that should weather the storm.

It looks as though the rally that has seen most global stockmarkets rebound by more than 20% since early March may already be fizzling out. After some euphoria over a few 'green shoots' signs that the rate of decline in the economy might have been slowing a little investors have been dragged back to reality by the realisation that the most serious problems facing the economy are going to be with us for a long time.

Billionaire financier George Soros hit the nail on the head when he said: "It's a bear market rally because we have not yet turned the economy around. This is not a financial crisis like all the other financial crises that we have experienced in our lifetime." He describes the recovery as looking like "an inverted square root sign. You hit bottom and then you automatically rebound some, but then you don't come out of it in a V-shaped recovery or anything like that. You settle down, step down."

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.