Bear Market -- When's a good time to buy and what?

[steve B]

If I had decent money and was still young...

The index funds are the smart long term play.

If you want to do some day trading type stuff, or more mid range, treat it like a casino, and put aside only as much as you're willing to lose. Consider it "play" money.
A friend who ran computers in the financial sector told me every day trader will eventually lose a lot. The financial places automate the buying and selling, and turn huge volume based on pre set numbers for particular stocks. If it goes below a certain number, buy say 10 million shares. If it goes up by some amount, like one cent, sell it all. Same if it goes lower by a certain amount, sell to limit losses.
All that can happen in under a second.

Some "play money" ideas.
Look into some energy stocks that may have seasonal price swings that are predictable. For example suburban propane usually has a low early in the year, then rebounds over the summer. Maybe not bad for a 3-4 month flip, but then again, they've been generally downward since 2011 with some decent spikes both ways along the way. The difference this past year was only about $4 a share though. Plus you have to remember to pay yourself for the time spent keeping track.
From what I've seen, international unrest usually is good for gold and silver. Especially gold. And is generally not good for stocks.
That's something you cans see right now, gold was around 1500 but was already having a start at a spike when the coronavirus was first detected around Jan 1.Big spike jan 7,the day it was recognized as a coronavirus, settled around 1550, gradually to 1550 is early February, over 1650 feb 4, down to 1580 by the end of Feb, then back up to 1631 today.
Some wild swings, and the biggest gains are probably already gone. Unless the news gets worse.
Again, it's pretty risky, if you bought in oct 2011, you still aren't at beak even.. I'm not sure how fast commodities get sold, but you can see with a near hundred solar swing in the last few days that if it takes much time at all to process, it would all depend on when the price got determined.
The coin dealer I hung out at years ago would sell bullion type stuff at the price that day, and would buy for I think that less 10%, so after that you'd have to be up at least that much to sell.

In the 80's before instant info, I wrote my economics paper on the lag time between gold prices raising and dealers changing the price tags on collector type coins where there was numismatic value too. Gold would go up, but most would only reprice at most once a week. When gold went back down, there was a similar lag time, as many only even looked at spot price weekly.
The prof didn't understand it but figured It was too short to get an A but too long and maybe actually smart, so not a C. I took my B on a poorly researched and documented paper and was pretty happy. I didn't have enough money to try it, but the dealer did, made a few bucks by buying during the upswing lag and gave me a few bucks in free stuff. Which I probably spent on something dumb that hasn't gained in 30 years...

So take that as a big caution about the above ideas. You might make a little, you might lose almost all of it.