Five ways to deal with market volatility

US markets turned in their worst returns in years this August. So, as an investor, what should you do about it, if anything? Research shows that emotional selling, or bailing out of investments because things are scary, is all too common. This is bad because investor behavior and poor decision-making can adversely affect returns. A study released in 2014 showed that the average individual equity investor had a 20-year average annual total return that was 4.20% less than the index, directly related to poorly timed decision-making.* Take the emotion out of your investment strategy by doing these five things when markets get choppy: 1)     Know your history Since 1900, there have been 35 declines of 10% or more in the markets. Of those 35 occurrences, or “corrections” as they’re sometimes called, the index fully recovered its value after an average of about 10 months. And a 10% drop doesn’t necessarily lead to a 20% one (which denotes a bear market) — in fact, in just 12 of the 31 corrections in the S&P 500 over the last 50 years did a bear market eventually ensue. If anything, the reason that recent drops seem bigger is that they came after a 47-month