Historical Volatility Essay

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Option Volatility: Historical Volatility Filed Under » Options, Volatility By John Summa, CTA, PhD, Founder of OptionsNerd.com Volatility is both an input to valuation models (statistical/historical) and an output (implied). Just why this is so will become clearer once the difference between both volatility types is understood. This tutorial segment will focus on historical volatility, which is also known as statistical volatility (SV). Historical volatility is a measure of the volatility of the underlying stock or futures contract. It is known volatility, because it is based on actual, recent price changes of the underlying. Historical volatility can be thought of as the speed (rate of change) of the underlying stock price. Like a car speeding along at 75 mph (rate of change per hour), a stock or futures contract moves at a speed that is measured as a rate too, but a rate of change per year. The higher the historical volatility, the more movement the stock has experienced and, therefore, theoretically, the more it can move in the future, although this does not provide insight into either direction or trend. While there are different ways to calculate historical volatility (different parameter settings just like with any technical indicator) the basic idea underlying different calculations is fundamentally the same. Historical volatility essentially is a way to tell how far the stock or future might move in the future based on how fast it has been moving in the recent past. Thinking in terms of a car traveling at 75 mph again, we know that in one year, this car will have traveled a distance of 657,000 miles (75 x 24 hours x 365 days = 657,000). But the catch here is that the rate of change of 75 mph may not stay the same, and it doesn't tell us much about the direction of car (it could be going back and forth, not just in one direction, meaning it could

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