Standard deviation
Non-normal returns of alternative investments and skewness Non-normal return distribution is one of the most common features of alternative investments. With alternative investments we mainly look at skewness of the return distribution, which compares probabilities and sizes of profits to those of losses. A positively skewed return distribution shows small frequency of very big profits, … Read more
What volatility means Volatility is a measure of how much something tends to change. Unlike the usual way people look at prices of securities and their changes – up or down, the volatility point of view does not care about the direction so much. In fact it does not distinguish between up and down. When … Read more
Variance and standard deviation definition and calculation Variance and standard deviation are widely used measures of dispersion of data or, in finance and investing, measures of volatility of asset prices. Variance is defined and calculated as the average squared deviation from the mean. Standard deviation is calculated as the square root of variance or in … Read more
This article is a step-by-step guide to calculating variance and standard deviation. Definition of variance Variance is a measure of dispersion in a set of data. It measures how big the differences are between individual numbers in a set of numbers. Mathematically it is the average squared difference between each occurrence (each number) and the … Read more