Staying fully invested is difficult and you have to look no further than the last year to put any investment approach, strategy and philosophy to the ultimate test. With so many investors losing significant percentages of their portfolios taking stock in exposure to systemic risk and individual risk tolerance has taken a new and important precedent.

Since September the composition of my portfolios (DivG & RSP) hasn’t changed dramatically and turnover has been kept to a surprising minimum. I’ve been very active in the number of transactions I’ve initiated but the majority of those activities have either been continued purchases of existing positions or selling small components of a specific holding in order to rebalance a weighting within the portfolio.

Buying in the midst of absolute fear and despair was actually quite easy after studying the last decline in 2000-2002 with avid interest and I admit there were times where I expected a worse decline than we got.

During the darkest days of this market I swallowed hard, stuck to my plan and walked into the middle of some really bad declines to snap up shares of companies I wanted to own over the long-term. I didn’t always get the best price, but I still bought shares at prices I felt significantly misrepresented the true valuation of the company. Adding to the lack of emotion was my commitment to not chase stocks and allow them to come to me. The majority of my trades were done while I was working, sleeping or enjoying free time away from the office. I determined the prices I wanted to pay for specific stocks, entered limit orders for up to 10-15 days at a time and walked away. Some days I missed by pennies and other days the stock price fell completely through my LO to close dollars until my purchase price.

The tactic paid off regardless and my emotional interest in the market was minimal. I didn’t obsess about my portfolios, I didn’t check them constantly to see how much I was down because in reality I knew it was bad. When I did take the time to look I knew the numbers I saw and were purchasing shares at were simply the present value of stocks that I believed would be worth significantly more in the future. The constant commentary on the market, picking a bottom and the gloomy forecasts didn’t deter me.