Is this a good time to buy stocks?

The airline industry is a big unknown at this point, because almost everything depends on the details of the COVID-19 government bailout. Do you really want to bet that bailout will be more than minimally adequate?  Back in '09, the bailout of GMC was OK, but you would have been better off investing in Ford.

You know what was a good buy, 3 weeks ago at least?  ZOOM and Netflix.  Also, less speculatively, anything having to do with computers and the internet.

You should ALWAYS be buying stocks, make investing a habit.  Build a diversified portfolio over time. 

Yes, now is good time to find good deals. For your question about investing in Airline company's stock - check out how their business depends on / got impacted by the COVID-19. The same case is for retail business (excluding eCommerce).

Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on how close to bankruptcy airlines really are after the virus hit. 

you might as well travel to las vegas & get some whores with your hotel room as a bonus

It's like riding a roller coaster in a deep fog. Risk of deep crash is high, but prices now are low. Measuring government bail out versus an unknown recovery.

I think United Airlines is best of breed to handle the downturn, and to bet the airline industry it's the ETF JETS.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/JETS?p=JETS

About 30 until February 14, crashed to 11 or 12, touched 17, back to 12, closed at $15.30. Shows as 15% discount to the underlying stocks.

On March 30th, I bought a little bit of 5 stocks. Price fell and rose. Now up 15%, but its high risk. These are low Price to tangible book value, still down a lot year to date, and before the virus were earning a lot of money.

KSS Kohl's dept stores, COP Conoco Phillips, CMC Commercial Metals Co, OMF Onemain Holdings, MTG MGIC Investment Corp

KSS went from 50 to 13 to 18 to 11 to 20. Selling at 1/2 of book value and a 4:1 trailing P/E.The big dividend will be cut.

You can look up each. If they don't bankrupt, they are worth double on paper.

CMC hard to guess. Started in 20's, dropped to 11. choppy gain to $16.90.No 2nd dip.

OMF is consumer finance and lending. MTG is mortgages.

We passed 2 bottoms in the market and could still see a deep decline, or maybe not.

Stick with the top ten airlines and avoid those that likely will not recover.

Depends on which airlines survive the economic downfall.

If you can pick a good one, then you will make a lot of money. Yet there are a lot of poor choices which will crash. Unless you have access to the airline's financial records, strategies and a little luck, then you will have no way of determining which airline stocks to buy.

I think there are plenty of other companies and industries to choose from, which will be more profitable.