It has been widely reported that financial markets have been volatile due to recent health-related and resultant financial developments. However, the effects have not been uniform across companies. Notably, there has been an increased dispersion in stock-price movements, meaning that the spread between the best and worst performers has grown wider.

The two exhibits¹ on this page show the daily returns (price movements) for selected percentiles of the returns of members of the S&P 500 Index, one starting on 2 January 2019 and the other on 2 January 2020. That is, for each day, we show, for example, the return for the stock that is at the 95th percentile of returns that day and the stock that is at the 5th percentile of returns that day.

There are many reasons for this increased dispersion, and accounting for those reasons will presumably be a consideration in future analyses of stock-price movements during this period. For additional information on our thoughts regarding those analyses, please contact us.

1. The S&P 500 Index (“Index”) is a product of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and/or its affiliates and has been licensed for use by NERA Economic Consulting.  Copyright © 2020 S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, a division of S&P Global, Inc., and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Redistribution or reproduction in whole or in part are prohibited without written permission of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC. For more information on any of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC’s indices please visit www.spdji.com.  S&P® is a registered trademark of S&P Global and Dow Jones® is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. Neither S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC, their affiliates nor their third party licensors make any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the ability of any index to accurately represent the asset class or market sector that it purports to represent and neither S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC, their affiliates nor their third party licensors shall have any liability for any errors, omissions, or interruptions of any index or the data included therein.