Steven Nickolas is a writer and has 10+ years of experience working as a consultant to retail and institutional investors. Portfolio variance is a measure of the dispersion of returns of a portfolio.

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

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 ...

A good tool to ask the right questions. 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 ...

Direct labor standard price lets you estimate your direct labor costs for production or services according to the Corporate Finance Institute. This lets you know how many employees you need to ...

Small businesses often estimate their inventory. If you operate your business on the basis of inaccurate inventory figures, however, you may experience stock outs -- running out of products when ...

Claire Boyte-White is the lead writer for NapkinFinance.com, co-author of I Am Net Worthy, and an Investopedia contributor. Claire's expertise lies in corporate finance & accounting, mutual funds, ...

When you have the average production of three machines, it is easy to calculate the average or mean production. You just add ...