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 12/31/2010 of 0.9%, the price range for the day (0.25) was divided by the average price (26.98). 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. The red plot shows the actual price. 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 23 years, the Average Quarterly Volatility of USB stock price has been 23% 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. 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 USB : |
| Friday, February 18, 2011: We have news on Fiserv, Inc., ticker symbol FISV. Signs of an over-bought condition have become noticable. Also, there are breaking events concerning Zimmer Holdings, Inc. and McCormick & Company, Incorporated. From the News Archive: (2/18/2011 ) Bad news came from Reynolds American, Inc., Dollar Tree, Inc., Zimmer Holdings, Inc., and NVIDIA Corp. |