Energy And Utilities Have Been The Most Volatile Sectors

Volatility, as measured by the standard deviation of the the daily percent change in stock prices, has fallen since the beginning of the year in the MSCI World Index. The one month moving average of volatility has dropped to 0.54 from a high 0.86 on January 23rd.



The energy sector, unsurprisingly, has been the most volatile of the ten sectors. Volatility peaked at 2.01% on January 9th, the highest level since late 2011, but has since steadily fallen to 1.37%.



What is surprising, however, is that the utilities sector currently has the second highest volatility and it's currently on a rising, not falling, trend. Volatility in the utilities sector hit a low of 0.40% on 5/1/2014 and has since risen to 0.90%.



Charts of the remaining eight sectors are below.