
What are the best low volatility funds?
With that in mind, here are five low-risk funds that stand out now:
- Fidelity Income Conservative Bond Fund (MUTF: FCONX)
- SPDR MSCI USA Strategic Factors ETF (NYSEARCA: QUS)
- Nationwide Risk-Managed Income ETF (NYSEARCA: NUSI)
- Vanguard LifeStrategy Conservative Growth Fund (MUTF: VSCGX)
- FlexShares US Quality Low Volatility Index Fund (NYSEARCA: QLV)
What pairs well with low volatility stocks?
How to trade currency pair volatility
- Currencies with high volatility will normally move more pips over a certain period than currencies with low volatility. ...
- Currencies with high volatility are more prone to slippage than currency pairs with low volatility.
- Due to high-volatility currency pairs making bigger moves, you should determine the correct position size to take when trading them.
What is low volatility and why does it matter?
The low-volatility factor applies to the stocks that have been the least volatile in their asset class over time — avoiding the sharper ups and downs of other stocks. Why does it exist? There are several reasons why the low-volatility factor has the potential to outperform the broad market over the long term:
What are the highest volatility stocks?
Those criteria will generate a list of stocks that:
- Typically move more than 5% per day, based on a 50-day average—you can use any timeframe you want, but a 50-day average or more will help you find stocks that ...
- Are priced between $10 and $100—you can alter those amounts to suit your preferences
- Had average daily trading volume of more than 4 million during the past 30 days

What does low volatility mean in stocks?
If the stock price moves higher or lower more slowly, or stays relatively stable, it is said to have low volatility. Historic volatility is calculated using a series of past market prices, while implied volatility looks at expected future volatility, using the market price of a market-traded derivative like an option.
Is low volatility good for stocks?
A stock with a price that fluctuates wildly—hits new highs and lows or moves erratically—is considered highly volatile. A stock that maintains a relatively stable price has low volatility. A highly volatile stock is inherently riskier, but that risk cuts both ways.
What is a good volatility for a stock?
Volatility averages around 15%, is often within a range of 10-20%, and rises and falls over time. More recently, volatility has risen off historical lows, but has not spiked outside of the normal range.
Is high or low volatility better?
Their research found that higher volatility corresponds to a higher probability of a declining market, while lower volatility corresponds to a higher probability of a rising market.
What is considered high volatility?
When a stock that normally trades in a 1% range of its price on a daily basis suddenly trades 2-3% of its price, it's considered to be experiencing “high volatility.”
What is the best volatility indicator?
Top 5 Volatility Indicators:Bollinger Bands:Keltner Channel:Donchian Channel:Average True Range (ATR):India VIX:
What are the 5 most volatile stocks?
Here is the list of 10 most volatile stocks for investmentsGarden Silk Mills. ... Madhucon Projects Limited. ... KM Sugar Mills. ... 3i Infotech Ltd. ... GVK Power & Infrastructures Ltd. ... Jubilant Industries. ... Magma Fincorp Ltd. Magma Fincorp stock. ... Take Solutions Limited. Take Solutions stock.More items...•
How do you profit from volatility?
10 Ways to Profit Off Stock VolatilityStart Small. The saying 'go big or go home,' while inspirational, is not for beginning day traders. ... Forget those practice accounts. ... Be choosy. ... Don't be overconfident. ... Be emotionless. ... Keep a daily trading log. ... Stay focused. ... Trade only a couple stocks.More items...
How do you read volatility?
How to Calculate VolatilityFind the mean of the data set. ... Calculate the difference between each data value and the mean. ... Square the deviations. ... Add the squared deviations together. ... Divide the sum of the squared deviations (82.5) by the number of data values.
Are volatile stocks good for day trading?
High-volatility stocks are popular with day traders because they offer the opportunity to make money in a matter of hours, minutes, or seconds.
How do volatility stocks work?
Volatility is defined as the rate at which the price of a security increases or decreases for a given set of returns. It indicates the risk associated with the changing price of the security and is measured by calculating the standard deviation of the annualized returns over a given period of time.
How do you stay calm in a stock market crash?
Watching the stock market plummet can be particularly unnerving for most investors....Here are some tips to stay calm.Focus on your goals. ... Take solace from history. ... Don't check your investments! ... Remember that investing beats cash. ... Stay diversified.
Performance Data
Here are the price moves of these stocks from the close on March 9, 2009 through close on February 26, and during the recent correction between the closes on January 26 and February 8. The close on March 9, 2009 is generally recognized as the end of the previous bear market.
Study Findings
Based on data since May 31, 1988, the MSCI USA Minimum Volatility Index has outperformed the S&P 500 by an average of 30 basis points per year, including reinvested dividends, according to analysis from Ned Davis Research presented by Hulbert.
Liquidity Penalty
In the short term, as during the recent correction, low-volatility stocks actually may suffer the greatest price declines, Hulbert notes. Nardin Baker, chief strategist at South Street Investment Advisors in Boston, collaborated with Haugen on studies of low-volatility stocks.
What is low volatility investing?
Low-volatility investing is an investment style that buys stocks or securities with low volatility and avoids those with high volatility. This investment style exploits the low-volatility anomaly. According to financial theory risk and return should be positively related, however in practice this is not true.
When was low volatility discovered?
The low-volatility anomaly was already discovered in the early 1970s, yet it only became a popular investment style after the 2008 global financial crises. The first tests of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) showed that the risk-return relation was too flat.
Do low volatility stocks beat high volatility stocks?
Since low-volatility securities tend to lag during bull markets and tend to reduce losses in bear markets, a full business cycle is needed to assess performance.
Is low volatility a risk?
Finally, low-volatility stocks also tend to have more interest rate risk compared to other stocks. 2020 is a challenging year for US low volatility stocks since they significantly lag the broad market by wide margins.
What Is Low Volatility?
Volatility denotes the upward or downward movement of the stock market or an individual stock. This means low volatility can be described as security, asset, or fund whose value changes at a steady pace over a period of time, instead of fluctuating dramatically.
NIFTY 100 Low Volatility 30 Index
The NIFTY 100 Low Volatility 30 Index (LV30) was launched by NSE with the objective of measuring the performance of the least volatile securities in the large market cap segment. As the name suggests, the index selects 30 securities from within the NIFTY 100 companies based on their volatility.
Performance Of NIFTY 100 Low Volatility 30 Index
The concept of low volatility investing is based on cushioning the potential damage of a sudden market downturn. In other words, the objective here is not to give an aggressive top-of-the-chart performance. However, that does not mean that the LV30 index can be positioned as a balanced fund either.
What does lower volatility mean?
A lower volatility means that a security's value does not fluctuate dramatically, and tends to be more steady. One way to measure an asset's variation is to quantify the daily returns (percent move on a daily basis) of the asset.
What is volatility in securities?
Volatility is often measured as either the standard deviation or variance between returns from that same security or market index. In the securities markets, volatility is often associated with big swings in either direction.
Why are options more volatile?
More volatile underlying assets will translate to higher options premiums because with volatility there is a greater probability that the options will end up in-the-money at expiration. Options traders try to predict an asset's future volatility, so the price of an option in the market reflects its implied volatility.
How to measure volatility?
There are several ways to measure volatility, including beta coefficients, option pricing models, and standard deviations of returns. Volatile assets are often considered riskier than less volatile assets because the price is expected to be less predictable.
What does it mean when volatility is dropping?
If the historical volatility is dropping, on the other hand, it means any uncertainty has been eliminated, so things return to the way they were.
What is the beta of a stock?
One measure of the relative volatility of a particular stock to the market is its beta (β). A beta approximates the overall volatility of a security's returns against the returns of a relevant benchmark (usually the S&P 500 is used). For example, a stock with a beta value of 1.1 has historically moved 110% for every 100% move in the benchmark, based on price level. Conversely, a stock with a beta of .9 has historically moved 90% for every 100% move in the underlying index.
What is volatility in financials?
Volatility often refers to the amount of uncertainty or risk related to the size of changes in a security's value. A higher volatility means that a security's value can potentially be spread out over a larger range of values.
The Best of One World
Low-volatility strategies are at their best when markets are at their worst. Exhibit 1 is a relative wealth chart that plots the growth of the MSCI USA Minimum Volatility Index divided by the growth of the Morningstar US Market Index. When the line slopes upward, the minimum-volatility index is outperforming the broad market index, and vice versa.
Weathering the Storm
How did low-volatility ETFs weather the storm in the first quarter of 2020? In a word: differently.
Results May Vary
There are important, albeit nuanced, differences in the way low-volatility strategies are constructed. The disparity in USMV and SPLV's recent performances is a testament to that. Exhibit 2 provides further evidence. It shows the absolute value of the spread in the monthly performance of the best- and worst-performing funds among the 10 U.S.
USMV Versus SPLV
In the case of USMV and SPLV, these differences point back to the funds' overarching approach to portfolio construction. USMV attempts to build the least-volatile portfolio of stocks it can, choosing from the MSCI USA Index. SPLV's portfolio is made up of the 100 least-volatile stocks from the S&P 500.
Less Volatility
Low volatility does not mean no volatility, just less. Low-volatility stock funds are still stock funds. They are designed to be less volatile than their selection universes, and there's no question that they have delivered based on that criterion. But it can be dangerous to equate "less" volatility with "low" volatility.
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Ben Johnson does not own (actual or beneficial) shares in any of the securities mentioned above. Find out about Morningstar’s editorial policies .

Overview
- To help explain volatility and why it matters, let’s examine two imaginary stocks and their annual returns over three years.
Further reading
History
Performance
Criticism
See also
- In the short term, as during the recent correction, low-volatility stocks actually may suffer the greatest price declines, Hulbert notes. Nardin Baker, chief strategist at South Street Investment Advisors in Boston, collaborated with Haugen on studies of low-volatility stocks. He told Hulbert that low-volatility stocks also tend to be the most liqu...