Standard deviation is a metric that shows the variability of a security’s returns over time. It can be used to gauge volatility based on past performance and compare a future return to past returns.

Andrew Bloomenthal has 20+ years of editorial experience as a financial journalist and as a financial services marketing writer. Eric's career includes extensive work in both public and corporate ...

This article is focused on introducing a control chart technique using relative standard deviation (RSD) statistics (i.e., RSD chart); in other words, a coefficient of variation chart for continued ...

Paid non-client promotion: Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our ...

In response to my article, Is the Stock Market Too Concentrated?, which relied upon standard-deviation calculations to assess investment risk, a reader wrote: “My problem [with your argument] is ...