With unemployment spiking to its highest levels in three years, the unwinding of the yen carry trade and the Middle East still mired in continuing geopolitical conflicts, markets have been caught in a perfect storm of surging uncertainty this August. As a result, the market's “fear gauge,” the Cboe Volatility Index ($VIX), recently spiked to its highest levels since the early days of the pandemic. While the VIX has cooled from those highs, it's still trading close to the 20 level - suggesting there's still an inflated level of fear priced into the market.
As this week's inflation data lingers right around the corner, investors who are feeling on edge can consider low-beta stocks as a relative safe haven during periods of heightened market uncertainty. Low-beta stocks are those with a beta lower than 1.00, which means that these stocks realize lesser movement in their prices compared to the broad-market indices. In other words, these names are less volatile than most.
