'IF you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you ... yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"

Rudyard Kipling's inspirational poem If first appeared in his collection Rewards and Fairies in 1909. The poem is inspirational, motivational, and a set of rules for "grown-up" living.

Kipling's If contains mottos and maxims for life, and the poem is also a blueprint for personal integrity, behaviour and self-development. If is perhaps even more relevant today than when Kipling wrote it, as an ethos and a personal philosophy.

Lines from Kipling's If appear over the players' entrance to Wimbledon's Centre Court - a poignant reflection of the poem's timeless and inspiring quality.

The piece equally applies in business, especially to the swings and roundabouts in the behaviour of the stock market in recent weeks.

It can be no great coincidence that Rudyard Kipling wrote this poem not long after the market crash of 1907, which was preceded by banks calling in their loans on a heightened risk of defaults.

In recent weeks, many phrases have been overdone regarding the current situation surrounding the impact of US sub-prime mortgage arrears. I can list the likes of credit crunch, market turmoil, liquidity crisis and even market meltdown.

As previously mentioned, the problems have arisen through poor lending criteria in the US, made into a problem when the US property market went into a downturn.

It should be pointed out that there are many UK properties mortgaged to the hilt and, in some cases, with additional loans on top. One hates to think what would happen in the UK if we saw the same sort of housing market downturn in the US, with prices falling as much as 20 per cent. The banks and mortgage companies would then call in their loans and somebody would have to pay the price.

Markets go down as well as up; otherwise they wouldn't be called markets, determined by supply and demand.

If they only went one way it would be a foolproof way of making money. The skill has always been in both selling at a high point and equally, if more importantly, buying at a low point.

Taking away the aspect of bad debts, there has been no significant change to global economic conditions since the start of the year.

When the FTSE 100 Index fell by more than 250 points almost two weeks ago, its biggest fall since March 2003, it was not too difficult to argue that the magnitude of the drop was excessive and irrational.

Having seen market fallbacks from May 2006 and March this year rebound sharply in June 2006 and April this year, it was no great surprise to see a bounce-back of 205 points the day after the big fall. Since then, the UK market, and indeed other markets, have managed significant recoveries. History and experience show that the time to buy the market is when the biggest noise is being made about any fall in the market.

The important point is that by last week, the FTSE 100 was back to its level at the start of the year, prompting the question "Was it necessary for others to panic?