This isn't the only way of making money in the market, though. In fact, counterintuitive as it may seem, it is possible to make a profit in a falling market, too . . .known as 'shorting' . . . even without ever owning shares. With the advent in the past few years of financial spread betting, you can easily take a punt on share price direction no matter which way it's heading.

Here's how shorting traditionally works, though.

An investor borrows shares from someone who owns them, sells them to somebody else and buys them back when the price falls, pocketing the difference along the way.

Shorting mechanisms haven't always been easy to access and, even though it's a completely rational way of dealing in the markets, it is generally regarded as less morally respectable than going long, ie betting on price rises.

Here's why: people panic out of shares quite easily, so markets fall faster than they rise, as we've seen in the past two months as global equities have shed up to 20% of their value. But that panic is the shorter's opportunity to profit from others' misfortune.

In any case, spread betting sidelines these sticky questions somewhat because the punter never actually owns the shares.

This allows the punter to open by selling and close by buying.

Here's the kicker, though: spread betting involves leverage. With a spread betting firm such as Delta Index or Worldspreads, you can use the 10,000 in your account to place bets of up to 100,000 . . . or even 500,000 in the case of currency markets.

The upside is that you can use small amounts of money to take much larger positions. The downside is that you're on the hook for all the multiplied losses should the market swing against you.

If things go really badly, you could face a margin call requiring an immediate injection of capital to bring your account back to positive territory . . . not unlike those unfortunate investment vehicles that are crashing all over Dublin these days.