When investing in the stock market, as in life, it pays to remember that most things we worry about never happen. It’s in our nature. As humans, we are bred to overreact to, dwell on or even brood over any hint of risk.

Today’s common investment-related worries include the possibility of Japanese–style deflation in North America, currency wars, the threat of war on the Korean peninsula and the potential need for more European bailouts.

Why we’re hardwired to overreact to unseen threats

For hundreds of thousands of years of prehistory, humans lived together in small tribes. As hunter-gatherers, they frequently moved from place to place. They were under constant threat from predators and members of other tribes. At night, if you woke to every sound from the bushes, you lost some sleep, but you cut your risk of being eaten by a lion or killed by an enemy sneak attack.

If you possessed the ability to worry constantly about unseen threats, you were more likely to live till you reached puberty, so you could pass along your worrywart genes to the next generation.

Investors are especially likely to dwell on risk

Today we face much less risk from animal predators and human marauders. But many people still carry this hair-trigger fear response. We spend more time than we should worrying about things that will never happen.

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That’s especially true of investors, who generally think more about the future than other people. It’s true all the more of tsinetwork.ca readers, as well as subscribers to my newsletters and members of my Inner Circle service.

That’s because many of you are the kind of people who seek out investment information from a variety of written sources, where it’s much more extensive and detailed than what you get from a glance at the headlines, the evening news or cable TV. However, some of that information is biased, overblown or incorrect.

This doesn’t mean you should ignore potential threats. You just need to put them in perspective.

Investment quality, diversification and balance are key to lowering anxiety when investing in the stock market

You’ll find that many of your worries concern things that are unlikely to happen; that are already largely discounted in current stock prices; and that probably won’t matter as much as you feared they would.

You get a much better return on time spent if you devote less of it to worrying, and more of it to analyzing the quality and diversification of your investments, and the structure and balance of your portfolio.

If you’re looking for authoritative advice on investing in the stock market, or fundamental analysis of stocks you’re considering buying (or selling), you should join my Inner Circle service. When you do, you always get clear, concise investment advice that’s 100% independent, and untainted by commissions or other undisclosed influences. I swear to it. Click here to learn more.