In last week's newsletter, I asked:

When you feel negative emotions like anger or fear start to disrupt your ability to think calmly, what do you do to regain your mental composure? Did the 2000-02 Nasdaq crash, the 2008-09 financial crisis or last year's pandemic panic teach you some useful guidelines on how to restore balance and make calm investment decisions?

Dozens of readers responded. Here are some of my favorites:

• To calm my emotions down within markets, I take a 30,000-foot view and realize that I'm only 20, I have a long time horizon to reverse my losses and it's normal to have intraday volatility....Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world, so I take advantage of that and that keeps me calm....Staying persistent, positive and patient are key to investing....I started retail trading when I was 15, and eventually stopped when it was too taxing and pointless. Now...I let my money work for me, not the reverse, as a student....We all have heightened emotion when it comes to our money. It's natural; it means we care. —Mia Gradelski, New York
• When stocks declined last year and in 2008-09, I actually got excited. My cash was highly valued and stocks were on sale. They're two sides of the same coin, but it highlights and focuses my mind on the positives as others fret over the negatives. —Shawn Conner
• I think some fear is a constant when you are invested....When I get particularly worried about what the market may do, I look at how balanced my portfolio is, and sometimes chat with my financial adviser for a more objective look at the markets and what the worst possible outcome could be...and then I can go back to not looking at my investments frequently. Last year’s pandemic panic looked like an opportunity for me to buy a few stocks that I had been watching for some time. And so far, while some of them are doing better than others, I’m pleased with the decision to buy at that time. —Patience Armstrong, Long Valley, NJ
• When emotions like this pop up and get in the way of me getting things done, I’ll turn to my digital journal to type them out. I’ve found that just getting things out of my head and onto paper, or the screen, helps me process them and be more objective with my thinking. I set a timer, and once it's up, I get back to work—calm and clear-eyed. —Peter McDermott
• I've always found that exercise is the best cure. Take out the frustration on the weights, treadmill, basketball court, etc., and then return home with a clear mind. Then take advantage of good buying opportunities when others are fearful. —Timothy Petersen
• When the going gets tough and fear and worry set in, I remind myself what my dad told me: “The U.S. economy is big and will right itself—quickly or slowly, but it will do it. It always has. And when it does, as long as the free market exists, the stock market will recover.” That long view has helped [us] weather everything the market has thrown at us in the last 20 years. —Bev Laumann
• The first [step] is to take some time. Set it aside for a day or two...return to review and assess what I know and don't know at a later time. This always brings the facts forward. The second is to prepare myself for how I will deal with regret or a feeling of loss...I need to do my research and set parameters for making a decision. I will "miss" an opportunity every once in awhile, but I know how to let myself feel the regret, and then focus on what I have learned or is useful from that situation....Limiting attachment and regret is key to building up the knowledge base I need to actually make a strong decision. —James Gathje

Thanks to you all for those great thoughts. They remind me that the word reflection comes from the Latin reflectere, "to bend back (or backwards), to turn away," from re- ("back") + flectere ("to bend," from which we derive such words as flexible and genuflect).

To reflect is both to be flexible about something and to turn away from it—an apt description of how we should make decisions about investing. 

Be well and invest well,

Jason

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What was the first investment you ever made? I'd love to hear what it was, how you found it, when (or whether) you sold it, how it worked out and what lessons you learned. (If you're curious, you can read about my first investment here.)

Just hit reply to this email to share your thoughts.

This past weekend, I looked at one of today's hottest fields for technology startups, the electric "air taxis" that would shuttle passengers to and from airports and out of earthbound traffic jams. It turns out that electric taxis have been tried before, in the first decade of the 20th century, and their trajectory then may have some lessons for investors in the emerging industry now. You can read that column, "What Came Before the $10 Billion Bet on Flying Taxis," here.

The previous columns in our "Back in Business" series on financial history are here.

If you're interested in special-purpose acquisition companies, those "blank-check" firms that have taken the markets by storm in recent months, have we got a newsletter for you. Edited by our ace SPACs reporter Amrith Ramkumar, it will go out on occasion to subscribers of the WSJ Markets newsletter. You can sign up here.

Here are some of the best things I found over the past week outside The Wall Street Journal:

• A lot of investors resent Cathie Wood of the ARK funds because her returns have made them look bad, says blogger Michael Batnick
• Fund managers Joel Greenblatt and Rich Pzena talk about what it will take for value stocks to bounce back (video)
• Just how crazy is this bull market getting? Quite crazy, says Bireme Capital
• Investors put more faith in funds' past performance than they should, says an academic research team, and don't respond when returns falter
• Lifting the world's poorest countries out of poverty will take much faster economic growth, but it's doable, says Max Roser of Our World in Data
• Much of what we "know" about the world might be wrong, since we base our beliefs on a tiny sample, says evolutionary biologist Joe Henrich
• Do you talk to yourself all the time? (I do!) Psychologist Ethan Kross explains how to get more out of talking to yourself (h/t @abnormalreturns)

Here are some of the best things I found recently in The Wall Street Journal:

• Private-equity giant Blackstone Group is pushing into hedge funds that can invest in higher-priced growth stocks, reports Juliet Chung
• Veteran homebuilders and real-estate executives tell Nicole Friedman that the housing market is among the hottest they've ever seen
• Electric-vehicle startups are projecting that they will hit $10 billion in revenue faster than most companies have ever done, shows Eliot Brown
• Scott Patterson tells The Journal podcast how a rebel geologist built Piedmont Lithium into a booming supplier to electric-vehicle makers
• Amid a regulatory crackdown by the Chinese government, Vanguard Group is curtailing its plans to expand in China, reports Dawn Lim
• One year after the pandemic hit, air travel is finally beginning to recover, Alison Sider shows
• Our critic Adam Kirsch makes a case that America's greatest living writer is Broadway musical composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim

Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow....We shall be judged, not by the kind of mirror found on us, but by the use we have made of it, by our riposte to our reflection.

— W.H. Auden