The Globe and Mail attempts to identify stocks with the lowest volatility in its Thursday edition. The Globe's Tony Batek writes in the Number Cruncher column that these stocks offer more than just less turbulence. Academic research shows a surprising anomaly: A portfolio of low volatility stocks -- the classic Steady Eddies of the market -- tends to beat standard market indexes when evaluated on the basis of risk to reward. This finding contradicted the notion that taking on higher risk results in better returns and cast a new light on equities that might have once been dismissed as too boring or conventional. Institutional investors now use low volatility strategies as a means to capture the "equity return premium" -- the excess return that stocks deliver over risk-free investments -- with less volatility than buying a market index. For investors, Mr. Batek says investing in low volatility stocks is one way to tiptoe back into stocks with greater peace of mind. Mr. Batek measured volatility by the standard deviation of daily returns. His low volatility picks are First Capital Realty, Fortis, National Bank of Canada, Dundee Real Estate Investment Trust, TransCanada and Enbridge.