Analysis of Skewness and Kurtosis in Stock Returns

A financial analyst is studying the distribution of stock returns for two different companies over a five-year period. The analyst has calculated the skewness and kurtosis of the returns for both companies. Skewness measures the asymmetry of the distribution, while kurtosis indicates the 'tailedness' of the distribution.

Company A has a skewness of 1.2 and a kurtosis of 4.5. Company B has a skewness of -0.8 and a kurtosis of 2.9. Based on this information, the analyst wants to identify which company has returns that are more symmetric and less prone to extreme values.