Stock duration
Stock duration of an equity stock is the average of the times until its dividends are received, weighted by their present values.
The interval between dividends can affect the attractiveness of a stock to stock holders.
In some cases there are legal regulations determining when stock dividends have to be paid.
Duration
As per Dividend Discount Model: Formula for the duration of stock is as follows-
where
- is the Macaulay duration of stock under the DDM model
- is the discount rate
- is the expected growth rate in perpetuity
The modified duration is the percentage change in price in response to a 1% change in the long-term return that the stock is priced to deliver. Per the relationship between Macaulay duration and Modified duration:
The other formula for the same is - D = saa
Derivation
The Macaulay duration is defined as:
where:
- indexes the cash flows,
- is the present value of the th cash payment from an asset,
- is the time in years until the th payment will be received,
- is the present value of all future cash payments from the asset.
The present value of dividends per the Dividend Discount Model is:
The numerator in the Macaulay duration formula becomes:
Multiplying by :
Subtracting :
Applying the Dividend Discount Model to the right side:
Simplifying:
Combining (1), (2) and (5):
Modified duration
For the stock market as a whole, the modified duration is the price/dividend ratio, which for the S&P 500 was about 62 in February 2004.