1. Think long-term. If you're a long-term investor, market movements over the course of a year or three are irrelevant. Are you saving for your six-year-old to go to university? How long does this investment have to grow? If it's five years or more you're off the hook — you can, and should, relax. Don't do a thing and stop checking the investment's value every day. It's unimportant and might cause you unnecessary anguish — the mind might understand how dramatically time reduces the risk of investing in shares, but often the heart finds it near damn impossible. I believe that most people would be better off if they invest suitably and regularly while only checking the value of their investments every few years. The longer your time horizon, the less short-term market movements matter.

2. Diversify. Your portfolio should be well diversified in terms of asset classes (i.e. stocks, bonds, property and cash) and within asset classes, especially the portion invested in the stock market. The various asset classes rarely move in lockstep so when one asset class is down another may be up.

3. Stay in the stock market. Evidence collected over more than a century has proven the benefit of investing in stocks. A Rand invested in 1900 would by now have grown to almost R100 000 compared to R480 one would have received if invested in bonds.

   Seven times since 1960 has the JSE plummeted by 30 percent or more. Every time the outlook was apocalyptic, but each time prices recovered. The length of time to recover has varied from 19 to 59 months.

   Research conducted by Nedgroup Investments shows that if one looks at the South African stock market's total returns over monthly intervals of rolling five year periods since 1961, not one of the 493 such periods was negative.

4. Have a plan and stick to it. Clearly define and document your goals, particular personal circumstances and time frame. Choose an investment plan that has the best chance of achieving these goals.

   Avoid gossip, envy or being swept up by others' panic — stick to your plan! If you've set out your goals and a plan to achieve those then don't be concerned about stories of good fortune or hard luck. To quote John Bogle, legendary US investor: "Stay the course. No matter what happens, stick to your programme. I've said 'Stay the course' a thousand times, and I meant it every time. It is the most important single piece of investment wisdom I can give you."

   Warren Buffet once said, "...to invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insight, or inside information…what’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework."

   Emotions are the greatest destroyer of wealth. Don't let it control your decision making. The best thing to do for the long-term investor when markets are volatile is to do nothing. Only change your strategy when your goals or circumstances change.

5. Don't try to time the market. Neither you nor your broker or financial planner is likely to know when the next boom or crash is likely to happen. Knowing when to sell and when to buy is remarkably tricky and no-one comes close to being consistently successful in timing the market.

   According to Anil Jugmohan, an investment analyst at Nedgroup Investments, using 40 years of data until 30 September 2008 it was found that more than 85 percent of investors achieved worse returns than a simple buy and hold strategy while almost 10 percent of them achieved returns even lower than cash (but with volatility similar to equities).

If your portfolio is heavily weighted in favour of shares — as it should be if you're a long term investor — you will see its value suffer sharp falls many times. Don't get sucked into the negativity that invariably follows after such a slump. After this crisis there will be another and after that one yet another. Fluctuations over a year, or even more, should not bother you if your horizon is measured in decades. Continue to invest throughout all the downturns and you'll be getting more stocks for the same money.

The difference between achieving your goals and failure is not how the stock market behaves — it always does well over the long term — but how you behave.

Do you have any tips for weathering the current economic storm? Leave a comment below...

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