Chapter II: This survey looks at historical volatility of Wisconsin Energy Corporation prices. The risks associated with long and short term positions can be evaluated according to projected shapes of the Volatility Curve. |
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This chart shows Volatility for Wisconsin Energy Corporation, defined to be the price range as a portion of the average price: So, to derive the Daily Volatility on 3/18/2010 of 1%, the price range for the day (0.56) was divided by the average price (51.03). 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. 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 26 years, the Average Quarterly Volatility of WEC stock price has been 14% while the Average Daily Volatility has been 2%. |
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You may be familiar with the "yield curve" which shows how interest bearing yields vary according to term. These Volatility Curves each apply to a discrete time interval. As the timespan across which Volatility is measured increases, the Volatility is expected to increase. However, as seen in this plot of the WEC 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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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 WEC : |
| 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.. |