1. Familiar Stocks Disney, Exxon, and McDonalds
Stine & Foster

2. Familiar Stocks
These data give monthly returns for stocks of three familiar companies: Disney, Exxon, and McDonald's from January 1990 through December 2005.

3. A). Describe in contrast histograms of the three companies
A) Describe in contrast histograms of the three companies. Be sure to use common axes to scale the histograms to make the comparison easier and more reliable.

4. Boxplots of Returns

5. Disney Returns

6. Exxon REturns

7. McDonalds Returns

8. B) Find the mean and standard deviation and coefficient of your variation for each of these returns. Can these means and standard deviations be combined with the empirical rule to summarize the distributions of these returns?
Company
Mean
Median
Var
StDev CV
IQR
Skewness
Disney
0.0087
0.0081
0.0063
0.0791
9.11
0.0916
Exxon
0.0117
0.0065
0.0021
0.0461
3.96
0.0566
0.6300
McDonalds
0.0105
0.0160
0.0051
0.0712
6.79
0.0946
Risk Free Rate
0.0033
0.0037
0.0000
0.0015
0.45
0.0020

9. C) What this comparison of the coefficients of variation tell you about these three stocks?
Company
Mean
Median
Var
StDev CV
IQR
Skewness
Disney
0.0087
0.0081
0.0063
0.0791
9.11
0.0916
Exxon
0.0117
0.0065
0.0021
0.0461
3.96
0.0566
0.6300
McDonalds
0.0105
0.0160
0.0051
0.0712
6.79
0.0946
Risk Free Rate
0.0033
0.0037
0.0000
0.0015
0.45
0.0020

10. Company Mean Median Var StDev CV IQR Skewness Disney 0.0087 0.0081
D) Typically, stocks that generate high average returns also tend to be volatile, with larger upward and downward swings in price. To get I higher average rate of return, an investor has to tolerate more volatility. Is that true for these three stocks?
Company
Mean
Median
Var
StDev CV
IQR
Skewness
Disney
0.0087
0.0081
0.0063
0.0791
9.11
0.0916
Exxon
0.0117
0.0065
0.0021
0.0461
3.96
0.0566
0.6300
McDonalds
0.0105
0.0160
0.0051
0.0712
6.79
0.0946
Risk Free Rate
0.0033
0.0037
0.0000
0.0015
0.45
0.0020