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A Complete Guide: What is Standard Deviation

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Analysing the trends and patterns in the stock market is crucial for every trader as it helps decide the entry and exit points better. Standard deviation is an integral part of technical analysis that is used in calculating different types of moving averages. It might appear daunting at first but when you understand its working and usage, standard deviation becomes simple. Let’s delve into the details of standard deviation and how to interpret standard deviation. 

Understanding Standard Deviation in Detail

Standard deviation is a mathematical calculation of dispersion in any statistical data. It helps understand how far or close individual points fall from the mean of the data set. A simple rule of standard deviation states that if data points are wide apart from the mean, there is a higher level of deviation, and vice versa if these points are closer to the mean. 

Know that it is always calculated in the square root of the variance. This calculation is applied by traders and investors to understand buying and selling points in the market.

How to Use Standard Deviation

Standard deviation is used by traders to assess the entry and exit points by evaluating the volatility and risk. Here’s how standard deviation can be used as a trading indicator:

  • Risk Management

Traders, investors and businesses can use standard deviation to assess risks in the market. By analysing market volatility and uncertainty of assets in the market, mitigating risks becomes easier. A simple way to use SD for determining market volatility is to observe whether the deviation is high or low. A high deviation reflects higher volatility and low deviation reflects lower volatility. 

  • Sales Control:

Businesses also use standard deviation in sales forecasting. It helps identify trends, seasonality, and patterns to make better sales calls. 

  • Portfolio Management

Standard deviation can be used to manage investment and trading portfolios by gauging variances, quantifying risks and tracking progress efficiently. This helps understand whether the investments are on the right path to achieving desired returns. 

  • Project Management 

Project performance and risk management are two crucial aspects of businesses and standard deviation is helpful in making better decisions. Business owners can use standard deviation to track the practical progress of their projects, the market reaction toward the project and whether or not they are getting desired value from the project. 

  • Financial Analysis

Standard deviation is a popular measurement tool in finance and accounting. It helps determine volatility of an investment and build risk management tradeoffs. Additionally, SD can also be used in building a strategy on how the business should be deploying their capital. 

Steps to Calculating Standard Deviation

Let’s take a look at the steps involved in calculating standard deviation:

  • The first step is to calculate the mean of all the data points. For this, you have to add all the data points and then divide them by data points.

  • Now, the variance of all the data points is to be calculated. To calculate this, you have to subtract the mean by the value of each data point. 

  • In the next step, you have to square the variance of each data point.

  • Then add the value of each squared variance.

  • Once you have the value, divide it by the number of data points. 

  • Get the square root of the final value you get from the above step. 

If these steps appear too complicated you do not need to worry as most of the online trading platforms provide you with the final data without you having to calculate the values.   

Examples of Standard Deviation 

Standard Deviation Formula

While you can rely on the standard deviation graph prepared by analytical tools on trading platforms, knowing the formula can help you enhance accuracy. 

Here’s the formula used to calculate standard deviation:  

√[Σ(xi - μ)2 / N]

Here, 

N Size of the population

xi= Each value from the population

μ= The population mean 

Limitations of Standard Deviation

Standard deviation is popularly used by traders and investors to assess the volatility in the market. However, just like other technical indicators, standard deviation also has certain limitations that you must be aware of: 

  • Fails to Measure Dispersion

Contrary to what it is supposed to do, standard deviation fails to measure dispersion: how far a data point is from the mean. Rather what it does is calculate the square of differences.

  • Not Feasible for Manual Calculation

While there are steps and a formula in place to calculate standard deviation, the practical usage of it is not feasible. Standard deviation calculation requires you to take several cumbersome steps that increase the chances of errors.

  • Impact of Outliers

A limitation of standard deviation that is hard to ignore is that it is severely impacted by outliers or external values and factors. This is because standard deviation is calculated by squaring the differences of data points from the mean which makes it prone to assessing extreme values. 

Conclusion

Standard deviation is a widely used technical indicator by traders and investors. It primarily helps assess the market volatility and risks by evaluating the difference between data points of a given data set from the mean of that data set. The wider the difference, the higher is market volatility. Although there are certain limitations to standard deviation when used in conjunction with other technical indicators traders can get values close to accuracy. 

Remember that opening a demat and trading account with an advanced broking platform eases analysing by providing you quick and accurate values.

Disclaimer: Investments in the securities market are subject to market risk, read all related documents carefully before investing.

This content is for educational purposes only. Securities quoted are exemplary and not recommendatory.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are Business Forecasting, and how are they calculated?

Answer Field

Business forecasting is a strategy where you make informed predictions about your business’s future. It is calculated using data sets and using the same to make future predictions by identifying patterns and a few common factors. To calculate business forecasting, you need to follow one of a qualitative or quantitative approach.

How can traders use Business Forecasting to identify potential buy and sell signals?

Answer Field

A trader can identify buy and sell signals in the stock market using time-series forecasting. It is a quantitative model approach that considers a variety of indicators like moving averages, price estimates, and much more that can be used to make trading decisions, buy or sell decisions, etc.

What are common strategies for using Business Forecasting in technical analysis?

Answer Field

Some of the common strategies for business forecasting in technical analysis are qualitative and quantitative approaches. These can be used to calculate short-term and long-term predictions respectively. These consider several other strategies like time series methods, Delphi method, econometric modeling, and so on.

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