REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

Professional slackliner Reinhard Kleindl walks a high wire in front of the Frankfurt skyline May 25, 2013. Austrian Kleindl set a world record on Saturday by walking the highest urban high line at 185 meters (607 ft).

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As the market starts to see more volatility creeping in, Morningstars Christine Benz recommends that investors take the time to reposition their portfolios and check their asset classes.

I think it also makes sense to dig a little bit deeper, even intra-asset class, to see whether some rebalancing might be in order. Even though small-cap stocks have sold off so far in 2014, they still have had a tremendous run relative to large-cap stocks, so you may need to do a little bit of trimming there, even though the market has done some of that work for you within equities, Benz said.

Also take a second look at some of the more defensive holdings in your portfolio. They may not look especially great in terms of relative returns over the past five years, but chances are you want them in your portfolio; you want something that will be a little bit more defensive that will hold up well during these periodic bouts of volatility, she said.

Within fixed income, also take a look at your exposures. Weve seen a tremendous runup in some of the more credit-sensitive bond types. High-yield bonds in particular have had a tremendous run. The typical high-yield fund has returned something like 11% over the past five years on an annualized basis. The typical core-type intermediate-term bond fund has returned just 5%.

An increasing number of clients are concerned about large companies lacking proper pension plans, according to Kevin VanDyke from Bloomfield Hills Financial. He said this is leading to more employees taking a lump sum payment, rather than waiting for the pension plan.

The immediate lump sum payout gives the client more control over their retirement benefits and greater flexibility in how they are used. However, both the adviser and the client need to be disciplined in the management of these assets, or else theres a real risk that the client will end up outliving their income stream, VanDyke wrote in a WSJ column.

What this means from an advisers standpoint is we have to treat these lump sum assets very carefully. We view the money from the payout as essentially the same as the clients pension, and the client cant afford for us to screw it up. So if were investing in equities, we also have to have a backup plan to generate income in case the market goes down. For example, certain insurance products offer minimum income benefit riders. The minimum income guarantee may not be not as good as the monthly check from a pension, but its enough for the client to live on in a worst-case market scenario.

According to a report from FA Insight, the median client base for advisory firms grew 6.7% in 2013, the highest rate since the survey started six years ago, reported Jeff Schlegal from FA Mag.

Advisors can partly thank the financial markets for their good fortune, but thats not the whole story. Advisors are doing a good job managing their costs, with expenses as a share of revenue hitting a record low in the six years of our study, says Dan Inveen, principal and research director at FA Insight, Schlegal wrote.

The study found that while nearly three-quarters of respondent firms reported significant growth rates, only one-third grew without negative side effects. Hence, FA Insights report stresses the importance of strategic business development and marketing, Schlegal said. The report found 85 percent of firms said they have a strategic plan, but many firms also indicated those plans arent particularly effective.

One frequent question that comes up when planning retirement is, How much, and how early, should I start saving? Financial Plannings Craig L. Israelsen wrote up some guidelines based on salary and expenses, to figure out exactly how much is needed to fund your retirement.

Theres an easy rule of thumb here: For each additional decade of retirement income, your client should save another 5% chunk but the correlation is tightest when clients start building a portfolio early, he said. For 30-year-olds, moving to a 10% savings rate from a 5% savings rate provides nine additional years of retirement income. Moving to 15% from 10% adds nine years, and moving to 20% from 15% adds eight years. In general, adding an additional 5% to your savings rate lengthens the longevity of your retirement portfolios by nearly a decade.

Junk bonds have been on the decline recently, which could have created more buying opportunities, especially in ETF investing. Mike Aneiro from Barrons spoke in a video interview about the potential upside.

If you wait out whats happening right now, a lot of people say the fundamentals of the high-yield market are still pretty good. Theres no wave of defaults or anything like that that happened in July, he said. But, as weve been warning at Barrons for awhile, just overvaluation can be a problem, lack of liquidity can be a problem. And when you stir in a little bit of volatility and geopolitical risk, this is when the pullbacks happen.

Now the flipside of that is now Is this a good buying opportunity? And in the longer term, it is a pretty decent chance to buy in, because the market has gone through some similar steps over the past few years, and it has always bounced back, he said. Even during the big bond sell-off in May and June of 2013, high-yield market finished that year up 7.4%. So if youre going to buy, this is a good time to do it. That doesnt mean the risk have abated completely.