Updated at 4:30 p.m. ET Thursday

I haven't heard anyone breathe the word, but we've come close this week. 

Pimco's Bill Gross told Bloomberg TV: "We're not looking at a recession yet, but we're at a tipping point."

And Harvard's Martin Feldstein, who was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Ronald Reagan, said: "This economy is really balanced on the edge. There's now a 50% chance that we could slide into a new recession."

I love the smell of fear in the market. It usually signals that a buying opportunity is approaching. 

Thursday's slide wiped out all of 2011's gains, with the Dow Jones industrials ($INDU), the Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) and the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) all down more than 11% year to date.  

The Dow's loss of 513 points was its worst one-day tumble since December 2008, and this recent downturn is the longest losing streak since October 2008 -- the depths of the global financial crisis. 

Technical indicators are now reading "oversold," with many showing the most oversold reading since July 2010. The S&P 500 bottomed at 1,027 on July 1 of that year. The subsequent rally took the market to its April 27 peak of 1,356 for the S&P 500, a 32% gain. 

The problem with oversold readings is that an oversold market can get even more oversold before it begins to rally. And frankly, the news flow seems loaded with bad news in the short term.  

For example, we got weak jobs numbers Thursday in the report on initial claims for unemployment, and we could see more Friday in the payrolls and unemployment reports.  

The consensus among economists is that the economy added just 84,000 jobs in July. That would be an improvement from the 18,000 added in June but still far short of the number needed to cut into the unemployment rate.

And I expect that euro debt crisis to keep delivering, well, a crisis. Bond yields above 6% for Italy and Spain are frightening, since they say those two countries will need a bailout. 

I don't disagree with folks who say the U.S. economy is growing dangerously slowly, or those who point out that the recent debt deal will slow the economy even further.  

But company earnings this quarter -- especially for companies with substantial overseas sales -- have been reasonably strong. Stock valuations are at the low end of reasonable. And low and falling bond yields support higher stock prices at some point. 

So far we haven't broached levels that have been support for a stock market that has been stuck in a range for the past few months. 

I'd still like to see more fear -- a few uses of the word "apocalypse," for example -- before I start buying, especially because it is, well, August and because August and September are historically very hard on stocks.  

But at this point, while I'm still keeping my powder dry, I'm closer to buying than to selling. There aren't a whole lot of good growth opportunities among stocks right now, but that scarcity is itself very attractive. 

I'm working on a list of growth stock opportunities that I'll post Friday. 

At the time of this writing, Jim Jubak didn't own shares of any companies mentioned in this post in personal portfolios. The mutual fund he manages, Jubak Global Equity Fund (JUBAX), may or may not own positions in any stock mentioned. For a full list of the stocks in the fund as of the end of the most recent quarter, see the fund's portfolio here.