Financial variance is the difference between budgeted and actual spending. Positive variance means spending less, negative indicates overspending. Regular monitoring reduces surprises and improves ...

Stock's historical variance measures its return stability over time. Higher variance indicates greater return unpredictability and risk. Calculate variance using Excel to simplify the process for ...

A company's planned budget at the beginning of the year will always end up being different from how the year actually plays out. It's just impossible to predict how the year will go. The differences ...

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

Variance is a statistical calculation that numerically describes the amount of variation in a data set. If values in a data set wildly fluctuate, variance would be high and predictions based on the ...

Cost and schedule variance data are part of earned value analysis, which is a tool that small and large businesses use as an early-warning system to identify and manage problems in ongoing projects.

Daniel Jassy, CFA, is an Investopedia Academy instructor and the founder of SPYderCRusher Research. He contributes to Excel and Algorithmic Trading. David Kindness is a Certified Public Accountant ...

Even the best budgets rarely turn out exactly the way that planners expect. Whenever you're planning in advance for a period of time, you'll inevitably make some mistakes in your estimates, and it's ...

A stock's historical variance measures the difference between the stock's returns for different periods and its average return. A stock with a lower variance typically generates returns that are ...

Even the best budgets rarely turn out exactly the way that planners expect. Whenever you're planning in advance for a period of time, you'll inevitably make some mistakes in your estimates, and it's ...