An insightful article in the Weekend Business edition of the Sydney Morning Herald (10-11 March, 2012) quotes Jeremy Grantham of investment manager GMO (he’s the “G” in GMO) quoting from “Investing advice from your Uncle Polonius”; the first part of GMO’s latest quarterly newsletter to clients. In it, he espouses valuable strategies to deal with and profit when markets are volatile.  He has 8 tips:

1. Believe in history – history repeats itself

2. Neither a lender nor a borrower be – leverage reduces the investor’s critical asset (which is…..patience)

3. Don’t put all your treasure in one boat – no explanation needed here !

4. Be patient and focus on the long term – follow the basic rules and “outlast the bad news”

5. Recognise your advantage over the professionals – where professionals sometimes feel they should act; you don’t have to if you don’t want to

6. Contain neutral optimism – we must always remain open to doubt and accept the possibility of error

7. On rare occasions, try hard to be brave – if the numbers tell you it’s a real outlier (i.e. an investment opportunity) of a misplaced market, grit your teeth and go for it (Harvest cautions that you should seek advice before engaging in any investment; especially one that carries high risk)

8. Resist the crowd: cherish numbers only – Resist crowd psychology. Trust not intuition or emotion. Trust only data, analysis and the well reasoned opinions that stem from them.