Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Have Individual Stocks Become More Volatile? An Empirical Exploration of Idiosyncratic Risk written by John Y. Campbell and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper uses a disaggregated approach to study the volatility of common stocks at the market, industry, and firm levels. Over the period 1962-97 there has been a noticeable increase in firm-level volatility relative to market volatility. Accordingly, correlations among individual stocks and the explanatory power of the market model for a typical stock have declined, while the number of stocks needed to achieve a given level of diversification has increased. All the volatility measures move together countercyclically and help to predict GDP growth. Market volatility tends to lead the other volatility series. Factors that may be responsible for these findings are suggested.