If you are a stock investor, consider strategies such as placing stop-loss orders to reduce losses in a volatile market, subscribing to services that email you company specific news as it happens, and setting up loss review trigger points to review your investment.

FORBES: The 5 Biggest Investment Myths

Jehangir offsets the risk in holding these volatile stocks with holdings in big financial services companies, especially banks.

FORBES: Best-Kept Secret

Kevin Daly of Goldman Sachs thinks there are modest grounds for optimism: the sectors that shrank most this time, such as oil and gas, are notoriously volatile, whereas those that grew, such as services, may be seeing sustainable improvement.

ECONOMIST: Economic stumbles

The regulators' intention had been that the law would force the two banks to move away from volatile capital-markets activity to concentrate on the more stable wealth-management services that Swiss banks are famous for.

ECONOMIST: Banks in Switzerland are slimming down, but slowly