Stock volatility poses an 'opportunity,' investment analyst says. Here's why

cnbc.com:

Volatility often sends investors running for the hills.

But gyrations are a feature — not a bug — of the stock market. Savvy investors can take advantage of a downturn by leaning into the pain, according to financial experts.

They point to the recent pullback in U.S. stocks as a chance to buy stocks on the cheap.

«Volatility — and opportunity — have arrived,» Austin Pickle, an investment strategy analyst at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, wrote in a note on Monday.

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The S&P 500 briefly fell into a correction last week, meaning the U.S. stock index was down 10% from its recent peak.

The index was fighting Friday to avoid its fifth-straight week of losses, which would be its worst losing streak since 2022. The S&P 500 is down 4% for the year.

First, there is some consolation for investors. Though they may feel painful, stock market corrections are fairly common.

There have been 27 market corrections since November 1974, including last week's market move, according to Mark Riepe, head of the Schwab Center for Financial Research. That amounts to roughly one every two years or so, on average.

Most of them haven't cascaded into something more sinister. Just six of those corrections became "bear markets" (in 1980, 1987, 2000, 2007, 2020 and 2022), according to Riepe. A bear market is a downturn of 20% or more.

Investors often engage in catastrophic thinking when there's a market pullback, believing the market may never recover and that they'll lose all their hard-earned money, said Brad Klontz, a certified financial