The Globe and Mail attempts to identify companies with steady, growing earnings and low price volatility amid stormy markets in its Thursday, Aug. 27, edition. The Globe's Ian Tam writes in the Number Cruncher column that for the cautious investor, the recent volatility in the equity markets has been a cause for concern. As a result, Mr. Tam has focused on companies that have shown a history of consistent and growing earnings, but also exhibit low price volatility, particularly over the past 90 days. A fairly common metric used to measure volatility is the standard deviation of daily price return (lower standard deviations imply lower volatility). From a fundamental perspective, Mr. Tam also looked for companies with low earnings variability, implying consistent earnings over time. Mr. Tam ranked stocks based on five-year earning-per-share growth, standard deviation of daily price returns, a low five-year beta and a low earnings variability score. Mr. Tam's picks had to have a minimum market cap of $800-million. His stable stocks in a stormy market are Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, CGI Group, BCE, Metro and CCL Industries.