1. Diversify. As tempting as it may be during boom years, don’t invest all your money in the fast-rising stocks. These are the most volatile, and thus the ones most likely to cause you to lose your shirt. Invest in slower-growing stocks with a promising future as well as those hot ones, and invest in blue chips.

2. Don’t look at just one stock market. There are markets worldwide as good as the New York Stock Exchange. If you invest in stocks indexed in an American exchange and also in stocks in, say, an Asian exchange, you may be able to cushion stock market volatility in one region with the stability of the other.

3. Read the news in depth. The front page only tells you what everyone else knows. If you invest in tech stocks, read the daily newspaper, but also invest in magazines like Scientific American and Wired. If you prefer agricultural, keep your eye on new trends in agricultural technology and culture. Stocks aren’t really about numbers; they’re about people and the ways people react to sudden change and long-term change to cause stock market volatility.

4. Specialize. Because you should understand what’s going on in the world your stocks move in, by focusing on tech stocks, international stocks, financial stocks, or another specialized group, you make it simple for yourself to follow the trends in this world which influence stock market volatility. No one can predict everything about every stock. But you can learn to predict what’s going to happen to EBay stocks if state tax laws begin to apply to private trade on the Internet.

5. Ride out the storm of stock market volatility. Sometimes all the stocks fall at once. This is scary. But historically, if you have your stock portfolio well-balanced, leaving your stocks right where they are will lose you less money in the long run than pulling them out as they start to lose money. Day traders, who are more likely to pull and run when stocks start to fall, tend to lose more money overall due to this fact.

Following these guidelines and using your own common sense – following your gut – will work as well to insure you against stock market volatility as anything can. The stock market is a gamble, and you need to be prepared for losses as well as gains. Don’t panic, and remember that what goes down usually goes up later, and you’ll do fine.