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Annualized volatility vs total return, 25 large caps, calmest to wildest (~2 years)

Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-08-22, from The Low-Volatility Anomaly.

as of ranking 25×3read in context →
Annualized volatility vs total return, 25 large caps, calmest to wildest (~2 years) — 25 rows by 3 columns, computed from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
tickerannual_vol_pcttotal_return_pct
SPY16.141.4
KO17.744.6
MCD18.86.8
JNJ18.986.1
PG19.1-13
COST20.812.1
PEP21.1-12.1
MO22.844.6
VZ23.524.1
HD24-3.4
XOM24.550.2
WMT24.655.4
JPM24.981.7
HON25.33.6
LMT26.723.1
MRK29.118.5
NFLX33.522.9
CAT34.6153.5
LLY38.242.3
TXN40.734.6
UNH41.3-21.5
NVDA47.266.5
ORCL55.25
TSLA61.199.4
AMD62.2195.6
Rows × columns
25 × 3
Computed
Completeness
No missing values
Source
US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence
Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats
JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for Annualized volatility vs total return, 25 large caps, calmest to wildest (~2 years), derived from the stored result.
ColumnTypeRangeNotes
ticker text 25 distinct values (AMD, CAT, COST…)
annual_vol_pct number 16.1 to 62.2 percent
total_return_pct number -21.5 to 195.6 percent

Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.

the exact SQL behind every number
WITH d AS (
    SELECT ticker,
           toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) AS dt,
           argMax(toFloat64(close), toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) AS c
    FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
    WHERE ticker IN ('SPY','KO','JNJ','PG','PEP','WMT','MCD','MO','VZ','XOM','JPM','HD','COST','UNH','MRK','LLY','HON','LMT','CAT','TXN','ORCL','NVDA','TSLA','AMD','NFLX')
      AND window_start >= now() - INTERVAL 800 DAY
      AND (toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
           + toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) BETWEEN 570 AND 959
    GROUP BY ticker, dt
),
r AS (
    SELECT ticker, dt, c,
           c / lagInFrame(c) OVER (PARTITION BY ticker ORDER BY dt) - 1 AS ret
    FROM d
)
SELECT ticker,
       round(stddevSamp(ret) * sqrt(252) * 100, 1) AS annual_vol_pct,
       round((exp(sum(log(1 + ret))) - 1) * 100, 1) AS total_return_pct
FROM r
WHERE ret IS NOT NULL AND ret > -0.5 AND ret < 0.5
GROUP BY ticker
ORDER BY annual_vol_pct

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