Last month wasn't exactly a great month for stocks. Overall, the S&P 500 wasn't even able to break even. The average return for all 500 stocks in the in the index was a negative 0.2%. And volatility, as we all would have guessed, has been on the rise. The average volatility for each of the 500 stocks in the S&P500 rose to 2.4%. I'll be interested to see what happens in September with volatility.

For the risk averse, here are last month's ten least volatile stocks in the S&P 500. There are no wild rides here. The S&P's tenth most volatile stock, Johnson & Johnson, was less than half as volatile as the overall average. The S&P's lease volatile stock, Biomet, Inc. was nearly 25 times less volatile than the average.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the ten most volatile stocks in the S&P 500 for August 2007. Is it any real surprise that our overall most volatile stock was Countrywide Financial? In August we got a taste of the full measure of the housing market's problems. Countrywide had been the housing market's poster child and is now viewed by many as one of, if not the biggest, cause of the problems in the housing market today.

Now let's have a look at the ten best performing stocks in the S&P 500 last month. Pat yourself on the back if you owned one or more of these stocks in any quantity. Owning any of these stocks in your portfolio would be a pleasure.

On the other hand, you didn't want to be holding any of last month's ten worst performing stocks in the S&P 500. Holders of Tenet Healthcare lost almost half their investment value in one month. And it's no surprise to see our housing market friend, Countrywide Financial, here in the bottom ten performers. Once it was the darling of the market. Now, nobody wants it. Except for the contrarian investors, that is.

That's a wrap on the month of August. I hope your investments were all in the upper half in terms of performance and the lower half in risk.