If you are close to retirement, or don't want to take big losses with the market, you can check and see if your 401 K plan has a fixed fund. You will earn any where from 1-4%, but you will minimize your losses right now. Just thought I would throw that out there.
Technically if you're close to retirement you shouldn't be in volatile stocks anyway. Your age and your portfolio's composition of equities vs. fixed income securities should have an inverse relationship. But it's good to bring it up for those who don't know. Also might point out that even if you have taken some heavy losses, that you don't want to stay out of the market because a lot of the movement up or down occur in spurts. If you miss the spurt back up, you're screwed. Btw that did not constitute investment advice and this post in no way develops a fiduciary relationship with anyone who reads it!
Depends on what you're buying to get the dividend. Dividend paying stocks, royalty trusts, close ends, income oriented mutual funds, etc. None of them are immune to volatility. The safest thing to buy are treasuries or US issued instruments and hold to maturity. But then you have interest rate risk. You risk locking your money up in a low interest vehicle and if interest rates shoot high, your stuck with the low interest.
Exactly, everything has got risk of some sort, some of it is market risk which is highly visible, especially the last month but others have hidden risk like jd just mentioned Interest risk. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish and the timeframe you are trying to accomplish it in. Time has an inverse relationship to the two I mentioned, if your investment period is a long time then market risk isn't usually as important, while Interest risk can be a factor. likewise market volatility can be be very impactful on a short term investment, whereas interest risk can be mitigated. That is why you need a decent plan so you can make good decisions and help you stick to those decisions.
