Quant Ratings Updated on 77 Stocks The stock market woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday, driving the SP 500, Dow and NASDAQ down 2.1%, 1.9% and 2.6%, respectively. While stocks chopped around today, the volatility is par for the course right now. Here’s the reality: We are heading into the “dog days of summer,” so it’s normal to experience an uptick in volatility over the next two weeks and into September. The fact is late August and early September are typically a quiet period for stocks, as the quarterly earnings announcement season is largely over and Wall Street jets off on late-summer vacations. This creates light trading volume and opportunities for unscrupulous short sellers to jerk the market around. It’s for these reasons that I hate the month of August. But as long as you’re invested in fundamentally superior stocks , you shouldn’t be concerned. Sure, they may experience wild swings in this low liquidity environment, but good stocks always bounce like fresh tennis balls. Bad stocks, on the other hand, fall like rocks.