A stock's historical variance measures the difference between the stock's returns for different periods and its average return. A stock with a lower variance typically generates returns that are ...

Even the best budgets rarely turn out exactly the way that planners expect. Whenever you're planning in advance for a period of time, you'll inevitably make some mistakes in your estimates, and it's ...

A good tool to ask the right questions. A company's planned budget at the beginning of the year will always end up being different from how the year actually plays out. It's just impossible to predict ...

Claire Boyte-White is the lead writer for NapkinFinance.com, co-author of I Am Net Worthy, and an Investopedia contributor. Claire's expertise lies in corporate finance & accounting, mutual funds, ...

Cost and schedule variance data are part of earned value analysis, which is a tool that small and large businesses use as an early-warning system to identify and manage problems in ongoing projects.

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

Variance is a statistical calculation that numerically describes the amount of variation in a data set. If values in a data set wildly fluctuate, variance would be high and predictions based on the ...

Stock's historical variance measures its return stability over time. Higher variance indicates greater return unpredictability and risk. Calculate variance using Excel to simplify the process for ...

Even the best budgets rarely turn out exactly the way that planners expect. Whenever you're planning in advance for a period of time, you'll inevitably make some mistakes in your estimates, and it's ...

Gross profit is one of the most important measures of profitability in corporate finance. Gross profit is total revenue minus the cost of goods sold (COGS). Because this metric only takes into account ...