The following article will show you, step-by-step, how to calculate the historical variance of stock returns with a detailed example.

Periodic Rate Functions in Excel. Microsoft Excel 2010 can be a huge help for a business when it comes to crunching the businesses numbers. Excel has a number of financial functions revolving ...

We'll calculate the historical monthly variance of the S&P 500 Total Return Index over a five-year period from August 2010 through July 2015 -- that's 60 observations (5 years x 12 months).