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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This chart shows Volatility for Rowan Companies, Inc., defined to be the price range as a portion of the average price: For instance, on 3/17/2010 the average price was 27.85 with a range of 0.40, indicating a Daily Volatility of 1.4%. The Daily Volatility is obtained by dividing the daily range by the daily average. A longer Volatility period such as Weekly Volatility is obtained by dividing the weekly price range by the weekly mean 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 27 years, the Average Quarterly Volatility of RDC stock price has been 35% 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. From left to right, each position plots the Volatility associated with increasing intervals of time. However, as seen in this plot of the RDC Volatility Curve, the increase is not constant. |
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A frequency distribution of the green points on the first chart (the daily volatility) yields this histogram. |
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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 RDC : |
| In the news, Thursday, March 18, 2010: An unfavorable condition has developed with MicroSoft, ticker symbol MSFT. Also, there are breaking events concerning AOL Time Warner (TWX) and Mylan Inc. (MYL) |