Aaron Rodgers and Greg Jennings may get all the glory when it comes to reliving the big Super Bowl plays of 2011, but it wouldnt have mattered how many points the Packers put on the board if they didnt have a strong defense as well.

In other words, a good offense cant be successful without an effective defensive program. And the same is true for your investment strategy.

Here are the best strategies to protect yourself when it comes to the game of investing.

Investment Offense

In terms of investing, there are numerous approaches to offense. You can invest aggressively in high-flying momentum stocks, buying into the most successful companies on the expectation that they will continue to outperform. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is a good example of a company where this approach would have worked well. The stock has definitely risen a lot, but it has also had the fundamental growth to support the price appreciation.

Alternatively, you could take a more conservative approach to offense. Rather than investing in the companies with the most momentum, you can identify stocks that might be undervalued. Some investors like to wait for their target investments to hit a specific valuation or price based on fundamental or technical analysis before they put their money to work.

Regardless of which method you choose, youre looking to generate some capital appreciation. When you play investment offense, your primary goal is to grow your money.

Investment Defense

A successful offensive campaign is great. What could feel better than watching your investments grow? But defense is important too. Imagine how you would feel if your investments didnt grow? What if they actually lost money? If youve been investing for any length of time, you probably know that losing money isnt much fun.

Warren Buffet. one of the most successful investors ever, is famous for spelling out the two most important rules of investing:

Rule #1: Dont lose money.

Rule #2: Never forget rule #1.

Thats defense. While its a good idea to take some risks in order to grow your savings, its also imperative that you have a system in place to limit that risk and protect your capital on the downside. The following chart shows how much of a gain you would require to make back a given loss:

You can see that even a relatively small loss can require a pretty big offensive push to recover especially with brokerage and investment fees involved. Its easy to say that youve got to control your losses. But how do you do it?

5 Ways to Manage Investment Portfolio Risk

1. Follow the Trend

The trend is your friend until it ends. One way to manage investment risk is to commit to only buying stocks or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that are in an uptrend and to sell them once they violate their trend line support. You can draw your own trend lines by connecting a series of higher lows on a chart, or you can use a moving average like the 50-day or 200-day to act as support. If the price breaks that support level by a predetermined amount, you sell.

2. Rebalancing

Longer term investors may try to manage risk by periodically selling stock investments or asset classes that have come to take up too much of their portfolios. They will sell off those assets and buy more of the stocks or ETFs that have underperformed. This can be a forced means of buying low and selling high.