Volatility hasn't crept back into the markets; it has jumped back in. The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has sent stocks lurching over the past week. And in the face of such huge market swings, investors sometimes make rash decisions that can ultimately harm their portfolios. That's where exchange-traded funds can help - specifically, low-volatility ETFs.

Big declines trigger fear, and that fear will be even more elevated when it's triggered by something like a genuine health crisis. People don't want to lose money, and they certainly don't want to lose more money than they already have. While you should always be looking for stocks to sell as a matter of regular portfolio maintenance, if you panic-sell, you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

In many cases, investors who jettison their stocks en masse on the way down cement their losses while leaving themselves out of the recovery.

Here are nine low-volatility ETFs that might help ward off this instinct and lessen your pain. Low-vol (and "min-vol") funds use different strategies in the name of providing portfolios that are more stable than the broader market. That not only helps muffle losses during downturns, but the reduction in volatility can give you a little peace of mind and let you participate in an eventual bounce-back. Take a look.

Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF

There are two basic types of volatility ETF: low-volatility ETFs and minimum-volatility ETFs. Let's start with the first.

The Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (, $58.39) is a pretty straightforward fund that tracks the S&P 500 Low Volatility Index, which is composed of the 100 S&P 500 components with the lowest realized volatility over the past 12 months. It then assigns weights