The analysis behind this post began as research to look at the distribution of stock market returns on a daily, monthly and annual basis to see to what extent the distribution can be labeled a "normal distribution." The data that I analyzed, going back to 1900 on the Dow Jones shows that on a daily and monthly basis, the data-set follows some sort of bell curve, but on an annual basis return buckets are all over the map.
Annual Data:
Sample size: 111
Average: 5.73% (not compounded and not including dividends)
Standard Deviation: 24.85%
Based on the way that I've bucketed annual returns, they don't appear to be clustered in any sort of bell curve. Returns were negative 38% of the time and greater than 20% almost 1/4 of the time.
Daily Data:
Sample Size: ~28,000
Average: 0.025%
Standard Deviation: 1.143%
Empirically, the Dow fluctuated between a 2% loss and 2% gain 94% of the time on a daily basis. The daily return of the Dow was between -0.7% and +0.7% 64% of the time.
Monthly Data:
Sample size: ~1300
Average: 0.5%
Standard Deviation: 5.33%
Empirically, 77% of monthly returns are between 5% and -5%. 91% occur between -8% and 8%.
No comments:
Post a Comment
For compliance reasons, I don't post comments to the site, but I do like hearing from readers and am happy to answer any questions. Feel free to use the comment box to get in touch. Please leave an email address in your comment so that I can write back, or email me directly at Skrisiloff@avondaleam.com.