Investors have reemerged with brute force in the Washington region’s real estate market over the past few months, triggering bidding wars in some neighborhoods teeming with foreclosed properties and hindering traditional home buyers such as Melissa Diggins.

NEW YORK, Oct. 14 — Wall Street may be cheering the rally in the U.S. stock market, but many individual investors watched the Dow Jones industrial average soar past the 10,000 mark Wednesday on the sidelines.

United Airlines is planning a major purchase of new airplanes in the next few years, a sign that corporate America may once again be developing an appetite for new investment.

The turmoil sweeping through the financial markets has left many people worried about their own stocks, bank accounts, and retirement funds. The tottering of investment bank Lehman Brothers, the weakening cash position of AIG, and the purchase of Merrill Lynch — all taking shape over the weekend — are forcing average investors and homeowners to ask serious questions about what steps to take now.

The stunning events rattling the financial markets are raising a lot of questions about the average person’s finances. We talked to several experts to find some answers.

T he phones were jangling at financial advisers’ offices across the Washington area yesterday. That was no different from the day before — or many other days in recent weeks — as the biggest financial crisis in years has average investors seeking answers to the most pressing pocketbook questions.

It has been a whirlwind year for the financial world, with some of the nation’s most iconic institutions falling from distinction to extinction. What started as a mortgage crisis affecting some people has turned into a global crisis affecting all people, and average Americans are trying to make sense of it all. Many readers submitted questions to The Washington Post seeking guidance during this rough period. Many came from people here in the D.C. area. But they also came from up north, farther south, the Midwest and the West Coast. …

Japan’s individual investors, armed with $7 trillion in bank deposits, piled into shares trading at their cheapest valuations ever last month, even as the global credit crisis prompted overseas fund managers to sell out.