It’s enough to make you reach for Gravol if you are constantly watching the markets, as everyone seems to these days. The S&P 500 climbed more than 5% in a matter of three hours while bond investors would be happy to make that in an entire year! At times like these, amidst breathless front-page coverage of every gyration in the stock market, you can dust off your copy of The Intelligent Investor and find solace in the counsel of Benjamin Graham. Chapter 8, titled The Investor and Market Fluctuations has these wise words:

The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored. He should never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down. He would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: “Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.”