The past month has been a good one for stocks that tend to see smaller swings than the broader index

Volatility has risen in the stock market over the past month.

Anxiety in the U.S. stock market has surged amid a sharp selloff in artificial-intelligence names and stubbornly high bond yields.

Yet as high-flying momentum stocks stumble, their low-volatility peers are offering investors a cushion against market turbulence.

While the S&P 500 has struggled over the past month, stocks that tend to see smaller moves than the broader index have been shining. Take the Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF SPLV, for example.

It has rallied more than 8% over the past month even as the S&P 500 lost almost 4% over the same period.

These low-volatility names have outperformed even as the Cboe Volatility Index VIX, better known as the VIX, or Wall Street's "fear gauge," recently soared to its highest level since the spring.

"It's basically a collection of stocks that are a little bit less speculative," said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Northlight Asset Management, in a phone interview Tuesday. "As volatility increases, these are the kind of stocks that people are less likely to sell first."

U.S. stocks sold off on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 SPX, Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP all finishing in the red. A hotter-than-expected inflation report revived investors' anxieties about more aggressive Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes, sending bond yields surging higher BX:TMUBMUSD02Y.

However, low-volatility names managed to sidestep this latest move lower. The Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF, Fidelity Low Volatility Factor ETF FDLO and iShares MSCI USA Min Vol Factor ETF USMV all posted modest gains, according to FactSet data.

The Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF - which tracks an index consisting of the 100 securities from the S&P 500 with the lowest realized volatility over the past 12 months - counted utilities, financials, real estate, industrials and consumer staples as its biggest sector exposures at the end of October, according to data on Invesco's website.

So far this month, the low-volatility ETF has gained 2% to beat the S&P 500's 0.8% loss, according to FactSet data through Tuesday. The fund holds shares of companies like Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) and utility companies WEC Energy Group $(WEC)$ and Evergy $(EVRG)$.

Even low-volatility ETFs with significant exposure to tech have done well.

For example, the Fidelity Low Volatility Factor ETF FDLO, whose top two holdings as of Monday were Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT), is also beating the S&P 500 in November and over the past month.

The fund holds shares of other Big Tech companies, like Google parent Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL), Amazon.com (AMZN) and Broadcom (AVGO).

Strong performance over the past few weeks appears to have captured investors' attention. As a result, inflows to some of these funds have been picking up.

The Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF has seen about $30 million of inflows over the past month through Monday, while the Fidelity Low Volatility Factor ETF, attracted more than $55 million over the same period, FactSet data showed. The iShares MSCI USA Min Vol Factor ETF saw outflows of almost $263 million over the past month, but it took in almost $71 million on Monday, its biggest daily inflow since Sept. 21, according to FactSet data.

Generally speaking, low-volatility stocks may be "a little bit more stable when the market gets more jittery," said Zaccarelli. Given that U.S. stocks are about four years into a bull market, "people get a little nervous about whether those gains will hold."

-Christine Idzelis