Sharpe Ratio

Sharpe Ratio

  • helps to understand a stock's performance in relation to the risk it has had
  • Drawbacks are:
    1. uses SD, meaning we are assuming that the returns are normally distributed
      • The stock market is less than a perfect normal distribution, because of a large number of surprising drops and spikes in prices.
  • the value tells us how much the excess return it has had, in relation to the volatility it has endured (some might call risk).
    • a higher number tells us that the stock did well, considering how risky it was
    • The volatility considered in terms of ∆Standard Deviation of Excess return (ie. "how much more volatile is this stock than the market?")
  • Risk premium = how much percentage over the market rate the stock is expected to return (ie. expected return - risk-free rate)
  • spec: seems to be a backward-looking and limited-use formula