Overview

In finance, volatility (usually denoted by "σ") is the degree of variation of a trading price series over time, usually measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns.

Historic volatility measures a time series of past market prices. Implied volatility looks forward in time, being derived from the market price of a market-traded derivative (in particular, an option).

Volatility terminology

Since observed price changes do not follow Gaussian distributions, others such as the Lévy distribution are often used. These can capture attributes such as "fat tails". Volatility is a statistical measure of dispersion around the average of any random variable such as market parameters etc.

Mathematical definition

For any fund that evolves randomly with time, volatility is defined as the standard deviation of a sequence of random variables, each of which is the return of the fund over some corresponding sequence of (equally sized) times.

Thus, "annualized" volatility σ_(annually) is the standard deviation of an instrument's yearly logarithmic returns.

Therefore, if the daily logarithmic returns of a stock have a standard deviation of σ_(daily) and the time period of returns is P in trading days, the annualized volatility is

Volatility origin

Much research has been devoted to modelling and forecasting the volatility of financial returns, and yet few theoretical models explain how volatility comes to exist in the first place.

Roll (1984) shows that volatility is affected by market microstructure. Glosten and Milgrom (1985) shows that at least one source of volatility can be explained by the liquidity provision process. When market makers infer the possibility of adverse selection, they adjust their trading ranges, which in turn increases the band of price oscillation.

In September 2019, JPMorgan Chase determined the effect of US President Donald Trump's tweets, and called it the Volfefe index combining volatility and the covfefe meme.

Volatility versus direction

Volatility does not measure the direction of price changes, merely their dispersion. This is because when calculating standard deviation (or variance), all differences are squared, so that negative and positive differences are combined into one quantity. Two instruments with different volatilities may have the same expected return, but the instrument with higher volatility will have larger swings in values over a given period of time.

For example, a lower volatility stock may have an expected (average) return of 7%, with annual volatility of 5%. Ignoring compounding effects, this would indicate returns from approximately negative 3% to positive 17% most of the time (19 times out of 20, or 95% via a two standard deviation rule). A higher volatility stock, with the same expected return of 7% but with annual volatility of 20%, would indicate returns from approximately negative 33% to positive 47% most of the time (19 times out of 20, or 95%).

These estimates assume a normal distribution; in reality stock price movements are found to be leptokurtotic (fat-tailed).