Editor’s Note: If you’ve checked your brokerage account lately and thought, “Well, there goes my vacation, my kitchen remodel, and maybe my will to live”—you’re not alone.

Now, before you do something drastic (like sell your whole portfolio to buy gold bars and canned beans), take a deep breath. History is on your side. Stocks fall, yes, but they also recover. Quality holdings tend to bounce back stronger than ever, assuming you don’t bail at the bottom.

But staying calm doesn’t mean staying passive. There are smart, strategic steps you can take right now. Below, I break down two of them. Because you deserve better than to be collateral damage in an ego war among billionaires.

The Wall Street roller coaster…

The markets have been plunging in wild trading, and this time we can thank Donald Trump’s notion of “economic strategy,” i.e., slapping steep tariffs on anything that moves and pretending that isolationism in a global economy won’t backfire.

Hard to believe that just six weeks ago, the U.S. stock market was strutting around at all-time highs like it owned the place. Now, we’re on the cusp of a bear market.

Trump’s grand “Liberation Day” tariff proclamation on April 2 triggered the worst market meltdown since the COVID-induced inflation crisis (see chart).

The Trump tariff crash isn’t abstract hedge fund stuff. This is your hard-earned savings being tossed around like confetti at a clown funeral.

When the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), the so-called “fear gauge,” is above 20, it generally indicates the market expects higher-than-normal volatility over the next 30 days. The VIX currently hovers above 56, a sign that investors are extremely stressed.

On Monday, U.S. markets recorded their busiest trading day in at least 18 years, with approximately 29 billion shares changing hands. The Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced a dramatic intraday swing of 2,595 points. Stocks ended the trading day mostly in the red, after a short-lived rally lost steam.

On Tuesday, another rebound attempt fizzled and the three main U.S. stock market indices ended the trading session in negative territory. Rumors of tariff negotiations proved unfounded and Trump remained defiant, dooming Mr. Market to another manic-depressive session.

Unless Trump’s tariffs are rescinded or scaled back, the market will remain under downward pressure. Buckle up. The roller coaster won’t end anytime soon. Consider the following survival tactics:

1. You have options

Part of my overall investment strategy is to buy stocks at cheap prices during fear-based general market selloffs. Options can facilitate this strategy.

For buying stock cheap during panicky market selloffs, consider selling puts. For example, let’s say you’d love to buy a stock if it fell in price to $30. Rather than place a limit order to buy 200 shares at $30, you could sell two put options with a strike price of $30 for, hypothetically, $2 per share.

If the stock closes below $30 at expiration, the put option would be exercised by the put buyer and you’d be required to buy 200 shares of stock at the $30 strike price.

Read This Story: Tick-Tock! How Time Decay Erodes Your Options Profits

The benefit of buying your stock through option exercise rather than a limit buy order is that you get paid an additional $2 per share in income, making your net purchase price only $28.

The great thing about this option-selling strategy is that you can rest easy without worrying about options expiring worthless. You aren’t speculating on stock movement within a limited time period. Regardless of how the underlying stock price moves, selling options reduces the cost and downside risk of your stock ownership.

The only risk, if you can call it that, is you will make less money than straight stock ownership if the stock price skyrockets upward. But missing out on a speculative upside gain is much less painful than losing money…especially under today’s crazy conditions, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting wild 1,000-point swings.

2. Stop loss orders

Here’s an important tool that keeps losses in check: stop loss orders. One of the most widely used devices for limiting the level of loss from a dropping stock is to place a stop-loss order with your broker. Using this order, the trader will pre-set the value based on the maximum loss the investor is willing to tolerate.

If the last price drops below this fixed value, the stop loss automatically becomes a market order and gets triggered. As soon as the price falls below the stop level, the position is closed at the current market price, which prevents any additional losses.

A trailing stop and a regular stop loss appear similar as they equally provide protection of your capital should a stock’s price begin to move against you, but that is where their similarities end.

The “trailing stop” provides an advantage over a conventional stop loss because it’s more flexible. It allows the trader to continue protecting his capital if the price drops, but when the price increases, the trailing feature becomes active, enabling an eventual protection of profit while still reducing the risk to capital.

Over time, the trailing stop will self-adjust, shifting from minimizing losses to protecting profits as the price reaches new highs.

The upshot: During the market’s dizzying ups and downs, remember your goals. Panic is neither a useful emotion nor an investment strategy.

Got a question or comment? Drop me a line at mailbag@investingdaily.com

PS: My colleague Nathan Slaughter has uncovered a select group of stocks so strong, so reliable, and so rewarding that he believes they can thrive in any market, even under today’s crazy conditions. He calls them Bulletproof Buys. Click here to see why.