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 2026-10-04, from The Low-Volatility Anomaly.
| ticker | annual_vol_pct | total_return_pct |
|---|---|---|
| SPY | 16 | 41.4 |
| KO | 17.7 | 27.9 |
| JNJ | 18.9 | 59.4 |
| MCD | 19 | -7.9 |
| PG | 19.2 | -14.5 |
| COST | 20.6 | 12.4 |
| PEP | 21.1 | -27.1 |
| MO | 22.9 | 33.5 |
| VZ | 23.3 | 14.6 |
| HD | 23.8 | -21.2 |
| XOM | 24.7 | 39.9 |
| JPM | 24.8 | 56.6 |
| WMT | 24.9 | 49.4 |
| HON | 25.2 | 4.9 |
| LMT | 26.7 | -3.5 |
| MRK | 29 | 15.1 |
| NFLX | 34.1 | 7.1 |
| CAT | 34.7 | 141.7 |
| LLY | 37.8 | 42.1 |
| TXN | 40.8 | 44.7 |
| UNH | 40.9 | -34.7 |
| NVDA | 46.3 | 107.2 |
| ORCL | 56 | 2.3 |
| TSLA | 59.8 | 68.9 |
| AMD | 62.2 | 352.3 |
- Rows × columns
- 25 × 3
- Computed
- Completeness
- No missing values
- Source
- US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
- Licence
- Strasmore terms · free, no signup
What each column holds
| Column | Type | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
ticker |
text | 25 distinct values (AMD, CAT, COST…) | |
annual_vol_pct |
number | 16 to 62.2 | percent |
total_return_pct |
number | -34.7 to 352.3 | 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.
Run it yourself
This is the exact query behind the result above. Change a ticker, a date or a column and run it against the warehouse — no account, no key. The no-signup tier is smaller than the one this page was computed on; a query that reaches past it comes back saying which plan runs it.
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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