With the S&P 500 now in correction territory, down 10 percent from May's record high, you might be wondering which stocks are the safest to hold.

MarketWatch columnist Philip van Doorn put together a list of the 10 S&P 500 stocks that have shown the lowest monthly price volatility during the three years ended Aug. 20.

The top five include Wells Fargo bank, specialty chemical company Praxair, industrial conglomerate Honeywell International, financial services company Marsh & McLennan and U.S. Bancorp.

For the three years through Friday, Wells Fargo generated an annualized return of 18.9 percent, Praxair produced a return of 2.4 percent, Honeywell offered a return of 20.9 percent, Marsh & McLennan of 20 percent and U.S. Bancorp of 11.3 percent.

Wells Fargo traded down 4 percent Monday morning, Praxair traded down 1.7 percent, Honeywell down 3.6 percent, Marsh & McLennan down 3.5 percent and U.S. Bancorp down 4.5 percent.

If you're considering buying any of these shares, be careful about when you make the purchase, as the market is quite volatile now.

As for the stock market as a whole, Piper Jaffray has led the bullish charge on Wall Street for several years. But now that the S&P 500 has slid so much, Piper analysts are having second thoughts.

They have trimmed their year-end forecast for the S&P 500 to 2,135 from 2,350 previously, CNBC reports. The former figure still represents an 11 percent increase from Monday morning's level 1,924, so perhaps Piper will cut its target further.

"We no longer believe the odds are in our favor for the S&P 500 to reach 2,350 by year-end, since history shows that recoveries from pullbacks/corrections have generally taken about two to four months to materialize," Craig Johnson, a technical market strategist at Piper, wrote in a commentary obtained by CNBC before the market opened Monday.

He sees important support levels for the S&P 500 at 1,905 and 1,820. A drop below the latter level "would alter the longer-term uptrend of the broader market," Johnson said. The index hit a low of 1,867 Monday morning.

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