The Globe and Mail attempts to identify firms that survived the 2008 market crash and are prepared for another downturn in its Wednesday edition. The Globe's guest columnist Hugh Smith writes in the Number Cruncher column that in August, the S&P 500 hit a milestone that marked the longest bull equity run in history -- one that began in 2009. On hitting that milestone, investors started to wonder whether we had entered the ninth inning of the historic run, and it appears now they may have been right to wonder, and the game may now be ending. The S&P 500 is now flirting with correction territory, down 9.8 per cent from its peak in September. The recent sell-off has erased all of the gains made so far this year. It is probably overly pessimistic to say that this feels like 2008, but just the same, investors may want to look to companies that were able to weather the storm last time around. Mr. Smith's picks had to have a market cap of $2-billion or more and have posted a total return of 100 per cent or more since 2008. Mr. Smith considered a number of investing criteria. His select companies with strong sustainable earnings are Metro, Constellation Software, Empire, Stella-Jones and Enghouse Systems.