By Scott Ronalds

The stock market has been highly volatile in recent weeks with China taking the spotlight away from Greece. As we note in our updated Outlook, the markets’ gyrations, both up and down, should remind us that nobody ever knows where the markets are going in the short to medium term, and investors shouldn’t be surprised if they continue through a period of retrenchment or turn around and head back to new highs.

Reacting to the latest global hotspot by making wholesale shifts to your portfolio is not a winning strategy. Rather, an effective approach is to selectively add to quality investments when they go on sale. This is what we’ve been doing for our clients over the past week or so.

Our equity fund managers viewed the recent downturn as an opportunity. Below are some of the specifics. We also put some of the cash in the Founders Fund to work, increasing the overall stock weighting from 55% to 57%.

Global Equity Fund: Additional shares were purchased in a few European companies including Bayer, Commerzbank and BP, as well as Whirlpool and Apache in the U.S. A new stock was also added to the portfolio, Harman International (an American manufacturer of high fidelity audio products and electronic systems) after it dropped roughly 20% amid the broad sell off.

Equity Fund: Positions were increased in CCL Industries, PrairieSky Royalty, Novozymes and Home Capital Group.

Small-Cap Equity Fund: Additional shares were purchased in DirectCash Payments, ZCL Composites and Avigilon.

Our overall stance is still cautious: we continue to hold a lower-than-normal weighting in stocks and bonds in the Founders Fund, and the cash position is still high at 17% (primarily in lieu of a fuller weighting in bonds). To re-iterate, we don’t know if markets will go up, down or sideways in the near term. But everyone likes a sale, and we found a few deals.