Investors were hit from all sides in January.

Concerns about the global economy and company earnings in the United States, as well as turmoil in emerging markets, led major indexes to their worst month in two years.

However, many remain hopeful that the problems in January will not spill over into the rest of 2014. They even see the month’s downturn as healthy, given the market’s torrid 30 percent rise last year.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 5.3 percent in January, the worst start to a year since 2009. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 3.6 percent in January, and the Nasdaq composite fell 2 percent.

Many investors expected 2014 to be more muddled and volatile, looking for additional pullbacks and possibly a drop of at least 10 percent in one of the market indexes, known as a correction.