Leptokurtic A description of the kurtosis in a distribution in which the statistical value is positive. Leptokurtic distributions have higher peaks around the mean compared to normal distributions, which leads to thick tails on both sides. These peaks result from the data being highly concentrated around the mean, due to lower variations within observations. Investopedia Says: When analyzing historical returns, kurtosis helps gauge the level of risk for a stock. If the past return data yields a leptokurtic distribution, the stock will have a relatively low amount of variance, because return values are usually close to the mean. Investors who wish to avoid large, erratic swings in portfolio returns may wish to structure their investments to produce a leptokurtic distribution. Related Terms: Kurtosis Normal Distribution Platykurtic Skewness Tail Risk |