-
Bullish sentiment is unusually low, but it would have to fall below 18% to be considered extraordinarily low (two standard deviations below average).
FORBES: Continued European Concerns Sink Bullish Sentiment Near Two-Year Low
-
Other companies re-evaluate your bill every few months to account for big deviations in your average energy usage and adjust your payments up or down accordingly.
WSJ: Spread Out Your Energy Costs
-
We found that when earnings yield spreads during the prior five years averaged more than two standard deviations above the average, investors on average earned (annualized) returns on stocks of 21.3% for the following year, 17% for the next two years, 14.6% for the next three years and 8.3% over five years.
FORBES: What is the Earnings Yield Spread Telling Us?
-
Two standard deviations above the historical average is 50.7%, and levels above that mark are outliers.
FORBES: Bearish Expectations Haven't Been This Bad Since May 2010
-
Bearish sentiment is at unusually high levels, but not so high that it would be considered extraordinarily high. (In statistical terms, pessimism is less than two standard deviations away from its historical average.) The sharp increase comes as the market has pulled back, some large-cap stocks have declined notably over the past several weeks and uncertainty about the fiscal cliff looms.
FORBES: AAII Sentiment Survey: Bears Take Down Bulls
-
Bollinger bands, were developed by John Bollinger and generally are calculated by plotting two standard deviations above and two standard deviations below a 20-period moving average.
FORBES: Gain an Edge with Volatility Analysis
-
By comparing average prices instead of actual prices, the standard deviations it uses as benchmarks are significantly tighter because the range of prices, which produce the standard deviations, has been squeezed tighter by averaging them first.
FORBES: Protectionist Antidumping Regime is a Pox on America's Glass House
-
As the general population improves, standard deviations shrink and outliers move closer to the average.
FORBES: Beating The Market Takes More Dumb Luck Than Skill
-
Stunningly, the typical answer-based tutoring systems average an effect size of around 0.35 standard deviations, and all three of the step-based, substep-based, and human tutoring cluster around an effect size of 0.75 standard deviations.
FORBES: How Machine-Based Tutoring Could Disrupt Human Tutors