by Gene Walden

In times like these, with the economy in a tailspin, and the stock market in the tank, investing requires an extra dose of patience, perseverance and perspective.

It takes patience to ride out the bear market, perseverance to continue to invest even through a difficult economy, and perspective to see the long-term picture and realize that recessions and bear markets are just part of the natural economic cycle. Slumping economies and bear markets of the past have always turned around — and there is no reason to believe that this time will be any different.

The key to successful investing is to keep your emotions in check through good times and bad. Volatile markets can wreak havoc on your emotions. But those emotions — fear, greed, impatience and unrealistic expectations — are often the greatest obstacles to successful investing. As Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, once put it, “The investor’s chief problem — and even his worst enemy — is likely to be himself.”

Emotions can skew your sense of perspective and cloud your long-term vision with short-term distractions. It can make us blind to risk and oblivious to opportunities. You can’t expect your investments to always go up, and you can’t stop investing just because the market hits a downward cycle. The best opportunities often present themselves in the darkest times.

The key is to step back and take emotions and short-term considerations out of the equation. Work with your advisor to put together a well-diversified portfolio that is built to stand the test of time.

What should you have in your portfolio? That depends on your age, financial situation and threshold for risk, but a typical investor with a long-term horizon should build a portfolio with a mix of several investment vehicles.

That mix might include some conservative investments, such as bank savings and annuities, as well as some more speculative investments, such as mutual funds.

By building a portfolio that is geared to the long-term, you can eliminate the emotion of the market and the anxiety that investors often experience in bear markets. If you’ve built a truly diversified portfolio, it really shouldn’t matter to you how the stock market is doing on any given day, what the Federal Reserve will decide at its next meeting, or whether a particular stock meets its quarterly earnings numbers. Investing is a marathon — not a sprint — and short-term issues should have little relevance to your long-term goals.

The more diversified your portfolio, the better your chances of enjoying steady, emotion-free investment growth in the years and decades to come. Work with your advisor to put together a portfolio and an investment strategy that is built for the long-term.