Retirement plan participants with all of their savings in atarget-date fund are the mostlikely to stay the course during tumultuous equity markets,according to research from T. Rowe Price.

Analysts measured participants’ trading activity during thesummer of 2011 and 20 other periods of market volatility over a seven-yearperiod.

The good news is that retirement plan participantsoverwhelmingly tend to stay the course during market downturns, nomatter how they are invested.

During August 2015 and January 2016, when the Dow JonesIndustrial Average lost 6.6 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively,less than 2 percent of T. Rowe Price participant clients took anyaction with their retirement plans, which was consistent with sevenother periods of volatility since 2006. During the summer of 2011,participant activity spiked above 2.5 percent, the highest of theperiods examined.

During the latter period, about 30,000 participants traded inresponse to market volatility, with participants age 50 to 64 beingthe most likely to move assets. Half of the trades were to moveequities to less risky fixed income.

Over all of the periods examined, participants with 100 percentof their assets in TDFs were the least likely to trade, while thosewith only a portion of assets in TDFs were nine times more likelyto trade, about equal to those participants with no assets in TDFs,according to T. Rowe Price.

Low trading volume during market downturns does not meanparticipants were not aware of the cycles, as call volume spikedduring the most recent downturns. Of the participants surveyedduring the volatility during March of this year, 48 percent saidthey were concerned about the long-term performance of theirretirement assets, but 74 percent said they were not planning tomake any changes.

While market downturns do cause anxiety, T. Rowe Price says theycan also offer the chance to engage participants.

During 2015, the provider said it held more than 7,000one-to-one phone consultations focusing on deferral rates and assetallocation.

More than half of those participants took some action resultingfrom the consultations, with 22 percent changing deferral amounts,and 37 percent adjusting asset allocations. Of those that didreallocate, 89 percent moved to a TDF, one-third of whom moved allof their assets to a TDF.