roheba 20 posts msg #54504 - Ignore roheba | 
9/2/2007 4:42:22 PM
  I'm trying to determine a stock's 10-day historic volatility and use it in one of my filters.  Sadly, I'm not getting the same results in SF as I am in Excel.  I'd like some help figuring out why.
 
 Volatility is one standard deviation of the natural logarithm of the price change annualized.
 
 I'm assuming 250 trading days in a year, so the factor to annualize the standard deviation is sqrt(250), or 15.8114.
 
 Here's the formula I'm using in SF to give me the 10-day volatility:
 
 	standard deviation(10) * 15.8114
 
 For illustration, let's look at the stock SYK.  SYK's last 10 day's Close are as follows: 
 
 Day		Close
 8/20/2007	66.86
 8/21/2007	66.32
 8/22/2007	67.29
 8/23/2007	66.95
 8/24/2007	67.19
 8/27/2007	67.09
 8/28/2007	65.75
 8/29/2007	66.75
 8/30/2007	66.63
 8/31/2007	66.80
 
 Using this data in Excel, I get a 10-day volatility of 17.34%.  SF is telling me the 10-day volatility of SYK is 6.81%.
 
 I think the problem is with the standard deviation.  SF gets 0.43%, Excel gets 1.10%.
 
 For what it's worth,here's the filter I'm playing with:
 
 set{v10,standard deviation(10) * 15.81139}
 add column v10
 add column standard deviation(10)
 sort by col 1
 
 And here's the Excel calculation:
 
 	   (A)	   (B)	   ( C )   	(D)
 1	Day	        Close	Ln of Change	Cell Formula	
 2	8/20/2007	66.86				
 3	8/21/2007	66.32	-0.81%	<------	=LN(B3/B2)	
 4	8/22/2007	67.29	1.45%			
 5	8/23/2007	66.95	-0.51%			
 6	8/24/2007	67.19	0.36%			
 7	8/27/2007	67.09	-0.15%			
 8	8/28/2007	65.75	-2.02%			
 9	8/29/2007	66.75	1.51%			
 10	8/30/2007	66.63	-0.18%			
 11	8/31/2007	66.8	0.25%			
 12						
 13	Standard Deviation	1.10%	<------	=STDEV(C3:C11)	
 14						
 15	Trading days in a year	250			
 16						
 17	Sq. rt.of trading days	15.81139<------	=SQRT(C15)	
 18						
 19	Annual Volatility	17.34%	<------	=C13*C17	
 
 (Sorry about the alignment...I think you can get it.)
 						
 
 I'm stumped.  Any insight would be appreciated.
 
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stocktrader 294 posts msg #54505 - Ignore stocktrader | 
9/2/2007 6:22:48 PM
  I'm certain this is "not" what you're looking for:
 
  	    
 
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stocktrader 294 posts msg #54506 - Ignore stocktrader | 
9/2/2007 6:40:17 PM
  I think you should double check your Excel math....
 
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roheba 20 posts msg #54509 - Ignore roheba | 
9/2/2007 8:41:03 PM
  Stocktrader,
 
 Thanks for your response.  
 
 I'm not sure what your filter does, but it did point out the "Historical Volatility" measure.
 
 I'm new to SF.  I looked for and didn't find a "Volatility" measure, but I completely overlooked the "Historical Volatility" measure. 
 
 Back to the drawing board.
 
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stocktrader 294 posts msg #54516 - Ignore stocktrader | 
9/2/2007 11:39:54 PM
  Welcome to SF roheba.
 
 Historical Volatility
 
 
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miko 68 posts msg #54520 - Ignore miko | 
9/3/2007 10:51:07 AM
  There seems to be an undocumented third parameter for the number of days in a year to use, with the default 365. If you want to use 250 days (more like the industry standard), you would use Historical Volatility(10,1,250).
 
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stocktrader 294 posts msg #54521 - Ignore stocktrader | 
9/3/2007 12:10:10 PM
  Thanks miko.
 
 Using 250 gets the volatility to .17
 
  	    
 
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stocktrader 294 posts msg #54522 - Ignore stocktrader | 
9/3/2007 1:35:01 PM
 
  	    
 
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