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A comment on U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022. Parent comment

Re:U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022 by xapata on Friday January 06, 2023 @02:39PM (#34279799)
Are they normally distributed?
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Re:U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022 by pclmulqdq on Friday January 06, 2023 @03:12PM (#34280331)
Almost, but the distribution has slightly fat tails.
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Re:U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022 by ttymck on Friday January 06, 2023 @04:41PM (#34281599)
Is it correct to say that makes it (slightly) more like a uniform distribution, if viewed as a spectrum between one-point distribution and uniform?
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Re:U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022 by xapata on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:07PM (#34281944)
It's hard to imagine a uniform distribution over an infinite domain, but that sounds right if you're think of it as a half-open spectrum.
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Re:U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022 by kqr on Friday January 06, 2023 @04:43PM (#34281622)
I don't think normality is required -- the sqrt(n) scaling factor comes out of variance laws and the definition of the mean.

It should be true for any distribution that has a variance, and the 150-year historic return certainly has a variance.

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Re:U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022 by xapata on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:09PM (#34281975)
The sample variance is different from the distribution variance, but I get your point.
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