That was my first thought. If he's long in individual stocks, he might want to consider writing calls against those stocks, bring in some cash while he bides his time.
If he's heavily margined, that's a different story.
If I could retire now (18-24 months away), I'd roll my 401k into a self-directed account and put a portion of that money into big oil stocks, and write out-of-the money calls on them.
Oil is in a perfect storm at the moment with fracking, a global recession, Iran coming online, and the Saudi’s pumping all hitting at once. At some point it will be a buy.