Stock Market Volatility: Friend or Foe?

Abstract

Although a good deal of research effort has been allocated to understanding the time-series volatility of stock returns – as both market (or systematic) volatility and idiosyncratic (or non-systematic) volatility – the relationship of such volatility with cross-sectional volatility or dispersion of outcomes is sparse. Nevertheless, the quest to understand one must involve the quest to understand the other. In this paper, we investigate the dynamic of the dispersion of return outcomes in generating a portfolio’s expected return outcome. We find that changes in the level of cross-sectional volatility have highly significant implications for portfolio performances and the notion of risk.

Keywords: Investment horizon, Market return, Market; Risk, Stock performance, Volatility

JEL Classification: G10, G11, G12