Events of recent weeks are a grim reminder that the stock market can be a stomach-churning ride. If you are starting to feel a bit queasy, now might be a good time to slow things down and take stock of your investment strategy.

Eamon Porter of Aspire Wealth Management, an authorised adviser based in Malahide, Co Dublin, believes it might be a good idea for some people to flee to the security of cash, at least for the usual summer doldrums.

"The old saying of 'sell in May and go away' is based on the premise that summer months tend to see sideways movements in markets, " he says. "This year, when you add in the totally negative global sentiment towards oil, inflation and interest rates, as well as likely profit-taking of the last two years' growth, we may see further falls of 10%-15% over the rest of the year."

He advises people planning to retire over the next 12 months to switch to cash now, especially if they are planning to use their pension nest egg to take a large tax-free lump sum or to use the money to buy a retirement annuity. Porter also advises SSIA savers to switch to cash, especially if they have earmarked the money for a specific purpose when it matures.

But stockbroker Rory Gillen of Invest Like The Best, which runs investment training courses, believes investors should stick to their guns.

"If you've got a solid base of blue-chip companies and are prepared to invest for the long term you're not going to have any real problems, " he says. "I'm surprised that the markets have dropped as far as they have but that's always the way when things begin to slide."

Gillen says the people best placed to weather the storm will have stuck to sound investment principles rather than chasing a quick buck.

"As long as you've a sensible approach and pay attention to things such as dividend yield and priceearnings ratios, you should have little to worry about, " he says.

One of the best ways to protect your money in a choppy market is to drip feed your money bit by bit, according to Gillen. Known in investment circles as euro cost averaging, this tactic reduces the average cost of each share or unit in a fund when stock markets are declining. If you invest 200 a month, and markets slide by 10%, your 200 buys 10% more than it did the previous month.

Euro cost averaging avoids the risk of piling in money all at once, only to see the value of the whole investment slump in the following weeks.

It is the reason why SSIA savers are comfortably in the black even though many people who invested lump sums around the time the SSIA scheme began five years ago are still nursing serious losses.

Online bank RaboDirect rolled out a new facility last week aimed at customers who want to euro cost average. The Rabo Regular Investor allows them to dripfeed 100 or more every week, fortnight or month into a range of 20 equity funds managed by top international asset managers such as Henderson and Merrill Lynch.

Another textbook way of guarding against losses is to spread your money far and wide, investing across different industries and continents to avoid placing all your eggs in one basket. But Gillen believes it is impossible to make this work in practice.

"Picking sectors, just like trying to time the markets, is a mug's game, " he says. "The chances are you're not going to get it right."

Another option is to balance your stock market investments by buying other asset such as property or bonds so that a slide in one asset will be cushioned by the others. The simplest way to spread your risk is to invest in a managed fund which gives exposure to all of the main asset classes as well as cash.

The problem is that many managed funds sold in Ireland still have a lot of stocks and shares, especially Irish blue-chips, according to Paul McCarville, a director of Setanta Asset Management, the investment arm of Canada Life. So you end up with an investment that is an equity fund in all but name.

"It might be called a managed fund but if it has 80% in equities then it will behave pretty much like an equity fund, " says McCarville.

The stock market turmoil is likely to send nervous investors rushing for the protection offered by a growing crop of guaranteed funds.

They operate much like a managed fund, although with less exposure to equities and a greater concentration on safer options such as bonds.

The big attraction is that, even in a worst-case scenario, investors will at least get their money back at maturity.

For example, Canada Life's Active Guaranteed Bond has a full capital guarantee after six years with no limit on your upside during that time. The minimum investment is 12,500 and your money is invested in a range of stocks and shares, especially property companies and companies that pay high dividends, balanced against a large holding in fixed-interest bonds.

But you will pay a high price for all this protection.

The annual management fee is a chunky 1.8%, with an extra 1.4% added for the portion invested in property stocks. There are also hefty exit charges on any money taken out of the bond in the first six years. With charges like these, investors might be willing to forgo the guarantees and take their chances.

'The foundations ofmy dream to own a holiday home on a golf course are showing some cracks'

ENDA LONERGAN, 35, has seen the value of his money rise and fall since splitting a 2,000 investment between two RaboDirect equity funds last January.

By St Patrick's Day he was up about 100 but, the last time he checked, the gains had been pared to just 20.

Most of the damage was caused by his investment in the Henderson Pan European Property Equities Fund, which holds 640m of stock in 44 EU property companies. The drop has been absorbed to some extent by gains on Enda's high-risk punt in the Merrill Lynch Latin American Fund.

"I was doing much better prior to the stock market wobble of recent weeks, " says Enda, who is general secretary of the Connacht branch of the Golfing Union of Ireland. "The European property fund took the biggest hit, which surprised me, while the Latin American fund has held its own."

Because it invests in property stocks rather than directly in bricks and mortar, it was inevitable that the Henderson fund would be caught in the stock market tailspin.

Nevertheless, Enda's experience has made him think twice about property as a safe investment.

"My grand plan was to own a holiday home on a golf course in South Carolina by the time I'm 45, " he says. "But the foundations of my dream are showing some cracks. It doesn't mean I won't invest in property in the future. But I will be more cautious."

Because the minimum investment is just 100, Enda says RaboDirect was a good way of dipping his toes in the water.

"My SSIA matures at the start of next month so I decided to fool around on RaboDirect first to see if I had an aptitude for investing, " he says. "My intention is to put the SSIA money in RaboDirect's deposit account, at least initially, because if something pops up I'll be able to throw my hand on it straight away. I I hope to have it invested by the end of the year but I'm still not sure where that will be."