How to invest in turbulent times and protect your investments

Investing in a turbulent, up and down, crazy market can be a real challenge. In fact many investors go to the sidelines and simply wait out the crazy times rather than risk losing their money. But this doesn’t have to be the case. When markets are bouncing up and down rather than moving steadily upwards with occasional dips this can be scaring but still be very profitable if you follow a few key principles – and even these principles have a few options.

First, remember it is critical to keep your emotions in check. Don’t succumb to selling or buying that is not based on hard facts. And the facts should relate specifically to your investment strategies and to particular ticker symbols.

Second, keep your time frame for managing your portfolio. If you examine your portfolio weekly don’t succumb to making mid-week or daily decisions because this requires different strategies and concepts that won’t fit either your existing strategies or your time frame. In other words you can set yourself up for failure and losing money by switching horses’ mid-stream. If you want to react more frequently to the market then you should develop, if you haven’t already, strategies and concepts that work best when daily trading is a potential. You can use the same groups of ticker symbols that you prefer to watch but now your buy/sell rules will be different and designed specifically for up/down markets.

Third, be willing to spend a little more time and perhaps expand your analysis. If your weekly method, for example, is to have a program compute and give you recommendations based on technical analysis, perhaps you should look at a few charts to see if they confirm holding or buying particular positions that you have or are considering.