Three Tips For Surviving Market Turbulence

Posted by Richard on September 12, 2013

 

Most stock market investors are looking for the same result: strong and steady gains of their investments. Dealing with a period of sustained falling stock prices is not easy. All too often, investors react to a sharp drop in prices by panic selling or digging in their heels despite deteriorating fundamentals. But more thoughtful investors see a correction or downturn as an opportunity to review the risks in their portfolios and make adjustments where necessary.

When confronted with any adverse market event — whether it is a one-day blip, a more lengthy market correction (a decline of between 10% to 20%), or a prolonged bear market (a decline of more than 20%) — take time to review your portfolio. Dealing with volatility can be difficult. Here are some suggestions to help you and your portfolio survive market turbulence.

Tip 1: Keep a long-term perspective. The only certainty about the stock market is this: It will always experience ups and downs. That’s why it’s important to keep emotions in check and stay focused on your financial goals. A buy-and-hold strategy — making an investment and then holding on to it despite short-term market moves — can help. The opposite of buy-and-hold investing is market timing — buying and selling investments based on what you think the market will do next. Market timing, as most investment professionals will tell you, is risky. If your predictions are wrong, you could invest when the market is on its way down or sell when it’s on its way up. In other words, you risk locking in a loss or missing the market’s best days.

Tip 2: Maintain your balance. Over time, your asset allocation is likely to shift as your assets appreciate and depreciate.1 Rebalance regularly to help ensure your assets are properly allocated. Also periodically reexamine your risk tolerance. Has anything changed in your life that has made you more or less risk averse?

Tip 3: Talk with a professional. A financial professional can help you separate emotionally driven decisions from those based on your goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance. Researchers in the field of behavioral finance have found that emotions often lead investors to read too much into recent events even though those events may not reflect long-term realities. With the aid of a financial professional, you can sort through these distinctions, and you’ll likely find that if your investment strategy made sense before the crisis, it will still make sense afterward.

It’s important to remember that periods of falling prices are a natural part of investing in the stock market. While some investors will use a variety of trading tools, including individual stock and stock index options, to hedge their portfolios against a sudden drop in the market, perhaps the best move you can make is reevaluating and limiting your overall risk position.

Source/Disclaimer:

1Asset allocation does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss.

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