Thứ Năm, 24 tháng 11, 2011

Measure The Volatility of Investments For Online Investing

By James Glisson


Mathematical statistics and the measure of volatility is a good discipline used for Online Investing. These measures of investments are example concepts that have a tendency to intimidate average investors. Standard deviation based on the rate of return of an investment is a measure of the volatility of the investment and is a good representation of risk found in stocks and options. If you look in the Wikipedia article about Karl Pearson, Fellow of the Royal Society, it tells how he established the discipline of mathematical statistics. Karl Pearson first used the term "Standard Deviation" in writing in 1894 subsequent its use in his lectures. Standard Deviation is quite crucial in financial issues.

Thus, large standard deviations indicate that the data points are considerably from the mean and a modest standard deviation indicates that the data points are clustered a lot nearer to the mean. When looking at your investments, standard deviation serves as a measure of uncertainty. It is believed that standard deviation of a group of repeated measurements should give the precision of individual measurements.

Investors deciding whether measurements agree with a theoretical prediction must determine if the standard deviation of those measurements is of extreme importance. Investors can gain common sense practical value when online investing by acquiring an understanding of the standard deviation of a set of values and in appreciating how considerably the variations are from the common (mean) of stocks & options and the market indices.

Standard Deviation provides a good representation of the risk associated with a given security such as a stock, option or even a portfolio of securities. If you want to efficiently manage your investment portfolio then you need a good handle on your risks. Because risks are such an important factor, they determine the variations on the returns on the portfolio and give investors a mathematical basis for investment decisions known as mean-variance optimization. As risk increases, the expected return on your portfolio will increase and the uncertainty of the return will also increase. Properly understanding this, Standard Deviation provides a quantified estimate of the uncertainty of your future returns.

Investors need to place a great deal of importance on using standard deviation when we make trading decisions. When online investing with options it is even more paramount that the investor understands and is able to make proper use of tools such as standard deviation and Bollinger Bands. This is especially true since options involve risks that are not suitable to all investors.

Investors looking to write covered calls are best supported by stocks with a reduced standard deviation in their historical past. In a different approach, when they are seeking to write puts then it is a good idea to look for a stock with a high standard deviation. When there are large variances in standard deviation, the security will have higher risk and variance. Analysis tools called "Bollinger Bands", which are used by technical analyst, was originally created by John Bollinger to determine the highness and lowness of cost relative to earlier trades.

Bollinger Bands consist of a middle band being an N-period (usually the simple moving average), an upper band at K times an N-period standard deviation above the middle band, and a lower band at K times an N-period standard deviation below the middle band, where N and K are usually 20 and 2 respectively.The use of these Bollinger Bands are very helpful in recognizing patterns and comparing price actions of stocks and therefore are very useful for making systematic trading decisions. When used with other tools and data, Bollinger Bands are a very effective management tool that has a practical use of standard deviation and its use in making decisions for your online investing.

As a practical matter, it is a good idea that all investors understand Standard Deviation. In fact, online investing for beginners should start with getting a complete understanding of these and other investment terms.

In order that an investor be on the safe side of trading, let's assume that all investors are at a loss for education when it comes to both stocks and options. Therefore, we recommend a simple preventive measure by any investor that wants to be successful with online investing. That measure is to start your trading with FREE VIRTUAL STOCK TRADING avoid losing any money at all until you are comfortable with your experience level.

Good Luck with your Online Investing!




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