Take a long-term view of your investments

After all, we have been here before. The coronavirus pandemic, for instance, was the biggest economic shock the world has seen for many years. Before that we had the 2008 financial crisis, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and earlier still we had two world wars. While each of these crises were profound and had lasting effects, they did not land a fatal blow on financial markets. Although it may have taken several years in some cases, they did rebound and resume normal service.

So even if your investments are taking a serious hit, in the face of the latest crisis, that’s not a permanent state of affairs, and you should be confident that the situation will improve. Let’s imagine you’ve plotted your investment journey on a graph. If you plot it every day, the line is likely to be very jagged, with lots of peaks and troughs at different points in time.

However, if you sat back and only checked it after, say, five or ten years, your graph would probably show a fairly straight line heading upwards. The moral of the story is that you don’t need to be checking the value of your investments day after day, as it is long-term growth that matters.

We understand that the headlines can be alarming, and there is no getting away from that. But if your financial decisions are being driven by your emotions, you are probably not going to make the best ones. Of course, you could sell up if your investment drops by 1,000 points overnight. But how will you feel if this lost ground is made up in the following days, and you have massively undersold your investment?

You will quite rightly be wishing that you had held your nerve and kept your funds in the market. So be aware of the volatility that is going on around you but do not let it control your decision-making. Even if you are being bombarded with the scariest headlines, do not panic. The situation will, and always does, return to some form of normality eventually.