I wrote a book recently called Eight Steps to Seven Figures (Doubleday). In the book, I surveyed and interviewed nearly 200 individuals who had built investment portfolios worth $1 million. One of the nearly 80 questions I asked these individuals was the following: On average, how long do you hold your investments?

Interestingly, 75 percent said they held their investments on average for at least five years. Nearly 40 percent said they held investments for ten years or longer.

Only 8 percent said they held investments for one year or less.

Two other questions I asked that are relevant to our discussion here are the following:

	Do you invest differently during bear and bull markets?
	How often do you invest?

Concerning the former question, 70 percent said they invested no differently regardless of market conditions. In other words, bull or bear markets are just labels for the same thing - a place to invest to potentially grow your money over time.

And when I asked how often they invest, well over half said they invest at least once a month; another 28 percent invest at least quarterly.

To sum it up, the millionaire investors I surveyed did two things particularly well - they invested regularly, regardless of market conditions, and they held their stocks for long periods of time.

Sounds too simple, right? Just buy and hold stocks and you may get rich. Remember, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but buying and holding quality stocks actually put you in a better position to potentially build wealth in the stock market over time, its that simple. But don't confuse simple with easy. Doing one sit up is simple. Doing one sit up every day for the rest of your life may be simple, but it isn't easy. That's the same with investing. Buying and holding stocks may be simple. But buying and holding stocks isn't necessary easy. For example, buying and holding stocks during bear markets is a difficult thing to do. Yet, in order to maximize a long-term investment strategy, you must buy stocks during lousy market periods. That's how you position your portfolio for maximize gains once the market upturn occurs.

The market has been extremely choppy over the last month, and investors shouldn't expect this volatility to go away anytime soon. During such market periods, it is easy to lose sight of the long term if stocks are bouncing around dramatically in the short term. However, it is crucial that during such market periods investors don't forget the lessons taught by those successful everyday millionaire investors - buying and holding quality stocks may be the best way to potentially build lasting wealth in the stock market.