7 Ways to Protect Your Retirement Nest Egg in a Volatile Stock Market

After a long stretch of calm and a relentless rally, the stock market appears to be taking a breather. No one should be surprised -- unless you're surprised it took so long for this bull market to take some downtime. Stock market corrections, typically defined as a loss between 10% and 20% from the peak, occur about every two years, on average. The last one began in May 2015, so we're due, especially considering that the Standard & Poor's 500 index trades at about 18 times estimated corporate earnings for the coming 12 months, above the five-year average of 16 and the 10-year average of 14. Get used to a rockier market, says Jim Stack, president of InvesTech Research and Stack Financial Management