Though not finished yet, 2022 has brought more thrills and chills than any cautious investor could possibly hope for. Between geopolitical strife, supply shortages followed by supply gluts in some product categories, and inflation followed by a jarringly aggressive Federal Reserve, traders have had their fair share of volatility catalysts to navigate.

Amid this challenging backdrop, the S&P 500 briefly entered a bear market (defined as a peak-to-trough drop of 20% or more), while the Nasdaq is still in bear-market territory. To survive and even turn a decent profit, I had to stay nimble while also returning to my roots as a values-focused investor -- and what I didn't do in 2022, it turns out, was just as crucial as anything I actually did.

Maneuvering through metaverse mania

At the year's beginning, the buzzword wasn't inflation (though that would soon prevail). If any word was top of mind among eager traders, it would have been metaverse.

By then, Meta Platforms (META -1.16%) CEO Mark Zuckerberg had all but abandoned Facebook and was all-in on the build-out of the metaverse. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were all the rage and were selling at sky-high prices. The idea of selling metaverse headsets for $1,000 or more sounded like a can't-lose proposition.

Fast-forward to the end of November, and while there's still a dedicated NFT community, "Bored Apes" aren't selling like hotcakes anymore, and the NFT market has declined according to practically every known metric. Meanwhile, as of November 29, Meta Platforms stock was down 67%, and Roblox (RBLX 1.22%) stock was down 70%. Thus, my smartest move before and during the bear market was to avoid hype cycles, because chasing trends can be particularly devastating when asset prices go south.

Evading the commodities crash

Not every bubble of 2022 involved digital assets; certain classes of tangible goods went parabolic as well. As Russia invaded Ukraine and inflation spiked, it felt for a while as if oil would easily blast past $130 per barrel, natural gas would shoot far beyond $10 per mmBTU, and lumber would easily clear $1,300 per thousand board feet by the year's end.

The benefit of hindsight might make you feel as if it should have been obvious that those were peak prices. At the time, though, it was awfully tough to adopt a "this, too, shall pass" attitude while the supply demand dynamic was drastically skewed -- as was sentiment among short-term futures traders.

Thankfully, oil, natural gas, and lumber are significantly off of their midyear highs -- and also thankfully, I had a little voice in my head telling me not to go bandwagon-jumping in the commodities space. By heeding my contrarian instincts, I was able to get out before the bottom fell out, saving myself potentially years of waiting to get back to breakeven.

Prioritizing value before and during the bear market

It's surely not happenstance that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has outperformed the Nasdaq Composite lately. When times get tough and volatility strikes, a flight to safety typically ensues, and all of a sudden, financial traders value value again.

They'll assuredly pile back into growth stocks at some point, but avoiding the market's highfliers turned out to be a sound policy. When Tesla's (TSLA 0.15%) P/E ratio was in the triple digits and its price-to-book (P/B) ratio was in the 30s (I tend to prefer a P/B ratio under 3), I knew it was time to bail.

I continued to jettison assets with overly rich valuations throughout the year, using such classical metrics as P/E and P/B as guides, not hard-and-fast rules. This kept me out of trouble and, when valuations get low enough on companies I like, will empower me to buy former growth names at discount prices.

If there's any overarching theme here, it's that the trend isn't always your friend when bear-market conditions strike. Thus, the smartest move I made during this bear market wasn't specific to the metaverse and NFTs or to pricey commodities or even growth stocks. It was sticking to my core principles -- value, contrarianism, and avoiding anything that sounds too good to be true -- regardless of market conditions.