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 SYSCO Corporation, defined to be the price range as a portion of the average price: For instance, on 7/23/2010 the average price was 30.67 with a range of 0.54, indicating a Daily Volatility of 1.7%. 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. This is a different concept from the weekly average of daily volatility. The red plot shows the actual price. 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. Average Daily Volatility over the history of SYY has been 2% in contrast to the Average Quarterly Volatility of 19%. |
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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. 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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A frequency distribution of the green points on the first chart (the daily volatility) yields this histogram. |
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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 SYY : |
| 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.. |