Hello again Ashok,

Ahh, thank you for clarifying that you were looking at the returns of Indian equity markets.

If you look at the formula for the standard normal curve you will see that you cannot escape standard deviation in shaping the height and width of the curve. So the concept of standard deviation is inextricably linked with the idea of describing nature using curves and calculus to calcuate the area under the curve/probability.

The idea of what is the proper measure for 'risk' is an entirely different discussion. Here I would agree with you that your distribution would look different if a more realistic/asymmetric defintion of risk (i.e. the chance of loss) were used. Instead of a symmetric distribution you would have an asymmetric one. But this is a subject well outside the bounds of the discussion.

Thanks for your points of view and your questions!

Jason