Your Personal Playbook

Whatever the market is doing, a few habits protect you reliably:

• Keep an emergency cash reserve covering about six months of expenses, so you are never forced to sell at the worst moment.
• Invest on a regular schedule through dollar-cost averaging instead of timing the market — you buy more when prices are low and less when they are high.
• Resist checking your portfolio daily. Long-term investors who ignore short-term swings tend to outperform traders who react to every move.

The biggest risk in any bubble is not the bubble itself — it is panic.