  We study the price dynamics of stocks traded in a financial market by
considering the statistical properties both of a single time series and of an
ensemble of stocks traded simultaneously. We use the $n$ stocks traded in the
New York Stock Exchange to form a statistical ensemble of daily stock returns.
For each trading day of our database, we study the ensemble return
distribution. We find that a typical ensemble return distribution exists in
most of the trading days with the exception of crash and rally days and of the
days subsequent to these extreme events. We analyze each ensemble return
distribution by extracting its first two central moments. We observe that these
moments are fluctuating in time and are stochastic processes themselves. We
characterize the statistical properties of ensemble return distribution central
moments by investigating their probability density functions and temporal
correlation properties. In general, time-averaged and portfolio-averaged price
returns have different statistical properties. We infer from these differences
information about the relative strength of correlation between stocks and
between different trading days. Lastly, we compare our empirical results with
those predicted by the single-index model and we conclude that this simple
model is unable to explain the statistical properties of the second moment of
the ensemble return distribution.
