The market has started off the year on a down note, and stocks continued to trade with volatile negative action. Already twice this week, and this year, stocks in China plunged enough in a single day to trigger an automatic halt to trading. Shares also fell in Europe.

Market participants now bet that this turmoil will force the U.S. Federal Reserve to move much more slowly to tighten monetary policy than it had previously planned.

The implicit bet that interest rates won’t move much higher from here could be seen in the advance in U.S. Treasuries, up for a sixth day, and the increased demand for fixed-income assets. The increases in the benchmark Treasury 10-year notes lowered the yield to a two-week low; the move to safety was indeed also prompted by an announcement from North Korea that it had tested its first hydrogen bomb, and by the further (albeit slight) Chinese devaluation of yuan.

No surprise that U.S. market participants now consider it only 43 percent likely that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will increase overnight lending rates at either of its two meetings before April. Similarly, Fed Funds futures indicate the odds of a Fed rate hike before June stand at about 61 percent, down from 75 percent on the last day of 2015. The FOMC has meetings scheduled for January 26 to 27, March 15 to 16, and April 26 to 27.

The tough first week of trading for 2016 owes somewhat to the decline in crude oil prices, which continued to decrease. Energy stocks weighed on the S&P 500, too.

Having said all this, please note that the extreme market volatility on the first trading day of 2016 does not necessary predict the action in stocks to come for the duration of the year. Actually, first trading days are entirely unreliable predictors of performance for the coming year. Since the 1957 launch of the S&P 500 index, the first trading day of any given year has accurately predicted the year’s action only about half the time—in other words, could not predict the action for the year.

On the other hand, roughly 75 percent of the time, however, the direction of the market in the first month of trading has accurately predicted overall action for the year.

Whatever happens with U.S. equities, however, the U.S. remains the best house in the neighborhood. Relative to the volatility in the rest of the world, particularly the emerging markets, U.S. stocks have performed better this year, indicating that the U.S. market remains a safer choice for traders and investors.