How to Make Volatility Work For You

What's an investor to do with all this market volatility?

Tanglewood Capital Management's John Merrill and First American Asset Management's Joseph Keating are each chief investment officers -- and both CIOs say you can make that volatility work for your portfolio.

"We're big in investing in companies that are paying a dividend and growing their dividend," Keating told CNBC. "High-quality dividend plays, to us, short-term and long-term, is the way to go."

"We see this as a bear market,' Merrill said. "Bear markets tend to push things to an extreme in both directions. Asset classes like large-cap U.S. stocks, municipal bonds, and real estate investment trusts, we think have come down to very attractive levels for long-term investors."

Merrill is especially enthusiastic about municipal bonds, and he thinks that now is the time for investors to get aboard.

"Municipal bonds have really been innocent bystanders to the mess of the last six months," he said.

Keating agrees that municipal bonds are attractive, and he has a long list of attractive dividend-paying stocks as well.

"I think you can go into industrial stocks, like United Technologies

, Honeywell , Du Pont, I think you can go into some consumer stocks, like VF Corp , Procter and Gamble," he said. "I even think you need to start taking a look at some financials in here; Bank Of America I think, is a pretty interesting place to be...and...pipeline companies like Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and Enterprise Product Partners are great places to be."