Chapter II: Understanding Price Volatility behaviour is essential to assessing the risk associated with positions across different time spans. |
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This chart shows Volatility for Adobe Systems Incorporated, defined to be the price range as a portion of the average price: For instance, on 3/10/2010 the average price was 35.19 with a range of 0.31, indicating a Daily Volatility of 0.8%. Daily Volatility (the daily range as a portion of the daily average price) is plotted in green. Blue is Weekly Volatility, which is the weekly range as a portion of the weekly average price. This is a different concept from the weekly average of daily volatility. For reference, the price is plotted in red. Volatility, as measured through various intervals, ( Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly) is plotted according to color. According to academic theory, Volatility is exactly equal to Risk. But investors often make a distinction between these two concepts. The different character of Volatility as seen in different time frames, lends some support to the investor's view. During 24 years, the Average Quarterly Volatility of ADBE stock price has been 40% while the Average Daily Volatility has been 4%. |
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You may be familiar with the "yield curve" which shows how interest bearing yields vary according to term. Each Volatility Curve is a snapshot in time. As the timespan across which Volatility is measured increases, the Volatility is expected to increase. The relationship between the length of time, and the expected change in price, is not linear, as is demonstrated by this chart. |
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This histogram is a frequency distribution of Daily Volatility, corresponding to the green points on the first chart on this page. |
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In a similar vein, the Frequency Distribution of the Quarterly Volatility is plotted here. This is the distribution of the values plotted in purple on the top chart from this page. |
Refined Volatility Risk Analysis for ADBE : |
| Friday, March 19, 2010: We have news on AT and T, ticker symbol T. A significant moving average event has happened. Also, there are breaking events concerning L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. and Electronic Data Systems. From the News Archive: (3/18/2010 ) Bad news came from Mylan Inc., TECO Energy, Inc., MicroSoft, and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.. |