Investing, like most good things in life, is a discipline. You can be a disciplined investor by working out your investing rules, writing them down and sticking to them. They will help you keep you on the straight-and-narrow and protect you from rash decisions based on emotion. If you can control your emotions in the market, you will take a lot of money off investors who have allowed emotions to influence their investment decision. Uncertainty and volatility are facts of life in investing, and you need to learn to ride them. The stock market will move up over time, but it is never in a straight line. The last thing you can afford to do is panic sell when the market dips and everyone has gone all bearish. Just like the mythological Ulysses tied himself to the mast so that the Sirens wouldn't lure him into wrecking his ship on the rocks, so must we tie ourselves to our principles so that our emotions don't drag us into investment ship-wreck territory.
