NEW YORK (Money Magazine) -- I'm 37, make $52,000 a year and have just begun putting money into a 401(k). With thirty years until retirement, I'm inclined to believe that a somewhat aggressive investing strategy will pay off in the long run. But given the immediate uncertainty in the economy and the market, am I better off investing in less risky funds in the short term? -- Erik, Brooklyn, N.Y.

If you're waiting for uncertainty, immediate or otherwise, to die down before you embark on your long-term investing strategy, you're going to have a long wait. Things are never certain in the economy and the market.

Whether it's concerns about the ability of a new Congress and a second Obama administration to get a handle on our massive budget deficit, worries about the effect Superstorm Sandy might have on future job growth, trepidation over the approaching fiscal cliff or anxiety stemming from the European debt crisis, uncertainty is a constant.

Or, to borrow a phrase from Gilda Radner's classic Roseanne Roseannadanna character from the early days of Saturday Night Live: "It's always something -- if it ain't one thing, it's another."

So the more important question you should be asking yourself is this: What kind of investor do you want to be, given that you'll always have to deal with uncertainty? As I see it, you have two choices: you can be a reactive investor or a systematic investor.

Reactive investors spend most of their time figuring how to rejigger their investments to take advantage of new developments on the investing scene or to prevent those developments from hurting them.

Related: Worried about the fiscal cliff: Should I sell?

If they see that inflation is ticking up or interest rates are starting to climb, they may shift money out of bonds and into gold or commodities. If they believe economic growth is weakening and the economy may be slipping into recession, they might get into defensive stocks or buy long-term bonds.

If you like making lots of moves with your investments, this is the right camp for you -- for the reactive investor, investing is a never-ending guessing game. There will always be something going on in the economy or the markets that will catch your attention and require action.

The downside is that it's tough -- I would say virtually impossible -- to make the right call consistently. Very often what seems like the obvious isn't. Back in early 2009, for example, the last place most investors wanted to be was in stocks, which had just plummeted nearly 60% from their 2007 high. Moving to bonds or cash seemed a more prudent bet. Of course, we now know that since that low, stock prices have climbed more than 100%, while bonds gained about 28% and cash returned less than 1%.

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Retirement investing in uncertain times