Notoriously volatile.

I play the market all the time but I am young and far from wealthy so I'm a gambler and stick to options and go in and out very fast i have gone in and out of higher and lower tax brackets over night.... the market could crash this year and many say we are in for an earnings recession and in my view it could be any day bc if you just google S&P500 and look at the chart in max view you will see from as far back as it will show up up up up down down up up up up down down up up up up etc...... we are due for a major correction soon although i think markets will rally some more this year and this coming earnings will generally be poor but not as poor as predicted so the market will be looking good and the FED will raise rates at the end of the summer than yea after the holidays things will be super slow higher rates higher costs and with the oil prices and political movements more volatile than shares of tesla maybe yea a big crash and some people will lose it all while some people will be buying it all waiting for the next upswing its the cycle of life...Craziest thing i ever read about the stock market was that SEC halted trading on a bunch of medical marijuana stocks that were trading on the OTC market and i said WAIT WTF theres public pot corps lol i mean who would buy a medical marijuana stock... forget cooking the books what happens when the DEA burns the books so how does that work.... so aslong as there are people dumb enough to invest publicly in a company that is operating in a risky federally illegal business than yea the stock market can crash any day of the week for just about any reason...I love what you wrote!  

However with less a volatility comes less opportunies huge upticks in appreciation.

As a general rule and given past experience, I always prefer to buy SFR's vs. condo's, but like Justin noted, condos can turn out to be great investments.My reasons for not liking condos as investments: 1/ more volatile than SFR market (i.e. look at how condo's in the city of SF are doing right now vs.

If I were to guess, I would say that we probably have 8 move outs and 16 move ins per month on average....roughly one move in/out per workday....this varies considerably where I live as we are most volatile from April to June and Sept. to Nov....Winter is slower (in and out) as is mid summer (vacationers?)

Townhouses are likely to be a lot more price volatile if and when the real estate market ever softens up.   

REITS can be more highly volatile where they have super strong years and really negative years for returns.An UPREIT is another tool in the toolbelt of investing.

Albuquerque tends to be a stable market with very little volatility and steadily gains value at about 3.5% per year, on average.

vs $30,000 and rent for $650.From my perspective I see the 75-125K price neighborhoods being much more volatile over the next 10 years+.

With the stock market being extremely volatile, just like many of the members in the BP Community, is the reason why I love real estate so much!