Chapter II: Risks associated with short and long period price changes can be understood through Volatility Analysis. Here the impact of the Volatility Curve on the potential profitability positions across different time spans is shown. |
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Volatility is defined as the price range for a period, divided by the average price for the period: So, to derive the Daily Volatility on 7/21/2010 of 3.4%, the price range for the day (1.56) was divided by the average price (45.7). 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. It is important to avoid confusing this with the weekly average of the daily volatility, which is a completely different concept. For reference, the price is plotted in red. The remaining marks on the plot correspond to the Volatility measured across several time intervals. Investors often make a distinction between the concept of Volatility, and the concept of Risk. Academics define them to be exactly equivalent, but as can be seen here, there is good reason to distinguish between the levels of volatility or risk experienced across different time frames. During 28 years, the Average Quarterly Volatility of CSC stock price has been 25% while the Average Daily Volatility has been 3%. |
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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. From left to right, each position plots the Volatility associated with increasing intervals of time. However, as seen in this plot of the CSC Volatility Curve, the increase is not constant. |
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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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Similarly, the purple points on the top chart, the Quarterly Volatility Values, are subjected to frequency distribution here. |
Refined Volatility Risk Analysis for CSC : |
| Thursday, July 29, 2010: We have news on Automatic Data Processing, ticker symbol ADP. A significant moving average event has happened. Also, there are breaking events concerning St. Jude Medical, Inc. and W.W. Grainger, Inc.. From the News Archive: (7/28/2010 ) Favorable events happened at Cummins Inc. and Quest Diagnostics Incorporated. Meanwhile, bad news came from Harris Corporation and MetLife, Inc.. |