Volatility (redirected from Volatility (economics))

Volatility

A measure of risk based on the standard deviation of the asset return. Volatility is a variable that appears in option pricing formulas, where it denotes the volatility of the underlying asset return from now to the expiration of the option. There are volatility indexes. Such as a scale of 1-9; a higher rating means higher risk.

---

Volatility

A measure of a security's stability. It is calculated as the standard deviation from a certain continuously compounded return over a given period of time. It is an important measure in quantifying risk; for example, a security with a volatility of 50% is considered very high risk because it has the potential to increase or decrease up to half its value. Volatility may influence the type of investments one makes: one may directly invest in non-volatile securities, such as a certificate of deposit, but highly volatile securities lend themselves more to short selling and other forms of hedging.

---

Volatility. The term volatility indicates how much and how quickly the value of an investment, market, or market sector changes.

For example, because the stock prices of small, newer companies tend to rise and fall more sharply over short periods of time than stock of established, blue-chip companies, small caps are described as more volatile.

The volatility of a stock relative to the overall market is known as its beta, and the volatility triggered by internal factors, regardless of the market, is known as a stock's alpha.