SPLV--Try some lower volatility in your Portfolio – Circa November 2014 If you get heartburn watching the up-down daily churning of the market then low-volatility equity may be for you. They have worked for me, full discloser; I have significant positions in both of the ETFs and discussed in this post. The Daddy of all low-volatility positions is PowerShares, S&P 500 Low-Volatility Portfolio under the symbol (NYSEARCA, SPLV. Their claim to fame is that they take the 100 lowest volatility stocks from the S&P 500 Index as the positions in the ETF. Of course these 100 stocks would be traded at a much slower rate than the other 400 S&P 500 stocks so you would think that you would surrender some growth with these 100 stocks. In point of fact in times of market turmoil SPLV has outperformed the full S&P 500 index that’s mirrored by ETF (SPY). In the last 45 days SPY fell by 1% while SPLV gained 1.5%, a 2.5% swing. The overall price-earnings (P/E) ratio of SPLV is 19. SPLV sells at $37 a share today (a 52 week high) and pays a dividend of 2.4% while SPY ($203) pays a Dividend of 1.8%. As for trading volatility from 2011 to today SPLVs worst 3 month performance over those three years was --5.31 (SPY was –29.6%) and SPLVs best 3 month gain was 12.28% (SPY enjoyed a 26.8% best 3 month return). So it appears that there is a performance cost to owning SPLV over the entire S&P 500 Index (SPY). I use SPLV as a kinda surrogate for the “Fixed-Income” portion of my portfolio. With the current close to zero interest rate return this works for me. I have significant shares of SPLV at much lower prices and will add shares if it corrects to $35-$36 a share (2 to 3 percent or so.) I would only add to my position in SPY at a very significant market break of well over 10%. It’s a good vehicle but at over $200 a share I think it’s too big a chunk of cash in a single vehicle, at least for me it is. Happy Trails, Murray