“Cut losses and take steps to be diversified. Only investment money that can afford to be lost should be in more speculative investments,” said Mr Hobbs. 

Myron Jobson, of fund shop Interactive Investor, echoed this. He said drip-feeding money into the stock market was the most effective way of staying calm and reducing risk.

“By regularly investing the same amount, you also buy fewer shares when they are expensive and more when they are cheap to deliver a smoothed return,” he said. 

Think ‘capital preservation’

Savers worried about a coming crash can take refuge in funds designed to make money when markets fall.

Investment manager Ruffer’s flagship investment trust – the Ruffer Investment Company – aims to grow by at least twice the Bank of England’s official interest rate – but has made investors far more than that and has returned 68pc over the past decade. 

It holds a lot of inflation-linked bonds and currencies such as the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen, which are viewed by investors as safe havens. Over the past 12 months, when investors have begun to worry about inflation, it has made 14pc. 

Rob Burgeman, of wealth manager Brewin Dolphin, said it would not do as well as stock markets when they went up, but provided a lot of stability when markets went down and was therefore a worthy inclusion in a portfolio. 

Mr Burgeman also tipped the £950m Capital Gearing Trust, managed by Peter Spiller, an investor whose record goes back to 1982. Its objective is to preserve and over time grow shareholders’ wealth after inflation is taken into account.

To do this, it buys inflation-linked bonds, trackers funds and some individual stocks, but its main strategy is to buy investment trusts trading on big discounts to the value of their assets. This approach has made investors 9pc a year since 2001, which is well ahead of British stocks and the inflation rate.