Enron Mail

From:zimin.lu@enron.com
To:john.griffith@enron.com
Subject:Re: Historical Volatility
Cc:stinson.gibner@enron.com, john.arnold@enron.com, mike.maggi@enron.com
Bcc:stinson.gibner@enron.com, john.arnold@enron.com, mike.maggi@enron.com
Date:Thu, 3 May 2001 19:18:00 -0700 (PDT)



John,

You are correct, when you compute the historical volatility you need to use=
252 days to annualize the volatility.
This is because the historical data only existed for trading days.=20

The common practice here at Enron for computing Time to maturity is Calenda=
r Days (=3D Maturity date - valuation date).
Therefore the days in Year is 365.25. So the implied volatility from the E=
IMPVOL function uses 365.25 days as one year.

If you want to convert you can apply the following formula

historical vol * sqrt(252) vs. implied vol * sqrt(365.25).

Let me know if this helps.=20

Zimin








John Griffith@ENRON
05/03/2001 03:31 PM
To:=09Zimin Lu/HOU/ECT@ECT
cc:=09Paulo Issler/HOU/ECT@ECT, Stinson Gibner/HOU/ECT@ECT, John Arnold/HOU=
/ECT@ECT, Mike Maggi/Corp/Enron@Enron=20
Subject:=09Historical Volatility

Zimin,

I have a question about historical volatility. The way I have been calcula=
ting historical volatility is that I take the standard deviation of the log=
returns of the price settles. I then take that number (daily volatility) =
and multiply by the square root of the number of trading days to come up wi=
th an annualized volatility. The number of trading days that I have been u=
sing is 252, however I do not know if this is correct. What I am trying to=
do is calculate a historical volatility that would be comparable to the im=
plied volatility that we are calculating our books with. The implied volat=
ilities are iterated using the euro function. I get a straddle quote and I=
iterate what volatility would be used to come up with that price ( I also =
look at the eimvol function). I know that we use a 365.25 trading day conv=
ention in pricing our options, does this mean that to come up with a compar=
able historical volatility number I need to use 365.25 to convert the daily=
historical volatility to an annualized volatility?

Thanks again for your help.

John Griffith