In the stock trading world, beta is an indicator used to measure how volatile a stock is concerning the overall stock market. It is used in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM
Capital asset pricing model
In finance, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is an empirical model used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, if that asset is to be added to an already well-diversified portfolio, given that asset's non-diversifiable risk.
What stocks have the highest beta?
- Microsoft has a beta of around 1.25. This means an investor can reasonably expect that this stock is 25% more volatile than the market. ...
- Walt Disney Company has a beta right around 1.03. This puts its volatility right in line with the broader market. ...
- In contrast, Duke Energy has a beta of around 0.27. ...
What is a good beta for stock?
The company’s P/E ratio in the trailing 12-month period was 10.12, while its 5Y monthly beta was 0.93. In examining the 52-week price action we see that the stock hit a 52-week high of $66.97 and a 52-week low of $46.13. Over the past month, the stock ...
What is the formula for beta?
The debt to equity ratio can be calculated by dividing the present total liabilities of a company by shareholders’ equity.
How to calculate beta of a portfolio?
To determine the beta of an entire portfolio of stocks, you can follow these four steps:
- Add up the value (number of shares multiplied by the share price) of each stock you own and your entire portfolio.
- Based on these values, determine how much you have of each stock as a percentage of the overall portfolio.
- Multiply those percentage figures by the appropriate beta for each stock. ...
- Add up the weighted beta figures.
How do you use beta for stocks?
Key Takeaways A beta greater than 1 indicates a stock's price swings more wildly (i.e., more volatile) than the overall market. A beta of less than 1 indicates that a stock's price is less volatile than the overall market. A beta of 1 indicates the stock moves identically to the overall market.
Are high beta stocks good for trading?
High beta stocks can be great investments in bull markets since they are expected to outperform the S&P 500 by a marginal amount. They do however require a great deal of active management due to their market sensitivity. These are highly volatile and therefore risky investments in isolation.
What does a stock beta of 1.5 mean?
Roughly speaking, a security with a beta of 1.5, will have move, on average, 1.5 times the market return. [More precisely, that stock's excess return (over and above a short-term money market rate) is expected to move 1.5 times the market excess return).]
What is a good beta for day trading?
In trading, a beta of 1 has been found to indicate that the price of a security is moving with the market while having less than 1 translates to a less volatile market. On other hand, a beta that is greater than 1 helps to show that the security's price is more volatile than the market.
What is the ideal beta?
A beta greater than 1.0 suggests that the stock is more volatile than the broader market, and a beta less than 1.0 indicates a stock with lower volatility.
What does a beta of 1.20 indicate?
Trading-Glossary. "A measure of a fund's risk, or volatility, compared to the market which is represented as 1.0. A fund with a beta of 1.20 is 20% more volatile than the market, while a fund with a beta of 0.80 would be 20% less volatile than the market."
What does a beta of 0.8 mean?
If the stock is more volatile than the market, its beta will be more than 1, and if it is less volatile than the market, its beta will be less than 1. For example, a stock with a beta of 0.8 would be expected to return 80% as much as the overall market.
What is a good beta for a portfolio?
Beta is used as a proxy for a stock's riskiness or volatility relative to the broader market. A good beta will, therefore, rely on your risk tolerance and goals. If you wish to replicate the broader market in your portfolio, for instance via an index ETF, a beta of 1.0 would be ideal.
What is beta in stocks?
Beta is a measure of the volatility — or systematic risk — of a security or portfolio compared to the market as a whole. Beta is used in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which describes the relationship between systematic risk and expected return for assets (usually stocks). CAPM is widely used as a method for pricing risky securities ...
Why do investors use beta?
Ultimately, an investor is using beta to try to gauge how much risk a stock is adding to a portfolio. While a stock that deviates very little from the market doesn’t add a lot of risk to a portfolio, it also doesn’t increase the potential for greater returns.
What is a beta of 1.0?
A stock with a beta of 1.0 has systematic risk. However, the beta calculation can’t detect any unsystematic risk. Adding a stock to a portfolio with a beta of 1.0 doesn’t add any risk to the portfolio, but it also doesn’t increase the likelihood that the portfolio will provide an excess return.
Why is beta important?
Beta is useful in determining a security's short-term risk, and for analyzing volatility to arrive at equity costs when using the CAPM. However, since beta is calculated using historical data points, it becomes less meaningful for investors looking to predict a stock's future movements.
How does beta work?
How Beta Works. A beta coefficient can measure the volatility of an individual stock compared to the systematic risk of the entire market. In statistical terms, beta represents the slope of the line through a regression of data points.
What does it mean when a stock has a beta of less than 1.0?
Beta Value Less Than One. A beta value that is less than 1.0 means that the security is theoretically less volatile than the market. Including this stock in a portfolio makes it less risky than the same portfolio without the stock.
What is beta in capital asset pricing?
Beta, primarily used in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), is a measure of the volatility–or systematic risk–of a security or portfolio compared to the market as a whole.
Why do stocks have beta?
The beta is the number that tells the investor how that stock acts compared to all other stocks, or at least in comparison to the stocks that comprise a relevant index.
What does beta mean in investing?
In investing, beta does not refer to fraternities, product testing, or old videocassettes. Beta is a measurement of market risk or volatility. That is, it indicates how much the price of a stock tends to fluctuate up and down compared to other stocks.
Why should gold stocks have negative beta?
Some investors argue that gold and gold stocks should have negative betas because they tend to do better when the stock market declines.
What does a beta of utility mean?
Many utility sector stocks have a beta of less than 1. Essentially, beta expresses the trade-off between minimizing risk and maximizing return. Say a company has a beta of 2. This means it is two times as volatile as the overall market. We expect the market overall to go up by 10%.
What is the beta of cash?
Beta of 0: Basically, cash has a beta of 0. In other words, regardless of which way the market moves, the value of cash remains unchanged (given no inflation). Beta between 0 and 1 : Companies that are less volatile than the market have a beta of less than 1 but more than 0. Many utility companies fall in this range.
What does it mean when a stock has a beta of over 100?
If you see a beta of over 100 on a research site it is usually a statistical error or the stock has experienced a wild and probably fatal price swing. For the most part, stocks of established companies rarely have a beta higher than 4.
What does a beta of 1 mean?
A beta of 1 indicates that the security's price tends to move with the market. A beta greater than 1 indicates that the security's price tends to be more volatile than the market. A beta of less than 1 means it tends to be less volatile than the market.
What is asset beta?
Unlevered Beta / Asset Beta Unlevered Beta (Asset Beta) is the volatility of returns for a business, without considering its financial leverage. It only takes into account its assets. , on the other hand, only shows the risk of an unlevered company relative to the market.
Why is equity beta called equity beta?
It is also commonly referred to as “equity beta” because it is the volatility of an equity based on its capital structure. Capital Structure Capital structure refers to the amount of debt and/or equity employed by a firm to fund its operations and finance its assets. A firm's capital structure.
What is leveraged beta?
Levered beta, also known as equity beta or stock beta, is the volatility of returns for a stock, taking into account the impact of the company’s leverage from its capital structure. It compares the volatility (risk) of a levered company to the risk of the market. Levered beta includes both business risk. Systemic Risk Systemic risk can be defined ...
How to calculate the weekly return of a stock?
Follow these steps to calculate β in Excel: 1 Obtain the weekly prices of the stock 2 Obtain the weekly prices of the market index (i.e. S&P 500 Index) 3 Calculate the weekly returns of the stock 4 Calculate the weekly returns of the market index 5 Use the Slope function and select the weekly returns of the market and the stock, each as their own series 6 Congrats! The output from the Slope function is the β
Is a company with a 0f 0.79 more volatile than the market?
Also, a company with a β of 1.30 is theoretically 30% more volatile than the market. Similarly, a company with a β 0f 0.79 is theoretically 21% less volatile than the market.
What is beta in stock market?
Stock Beta is one of the statistical tools that quantify the volatility in the prices of a security or stock with reference to the market as a whole or any other benchmark used for comparing the performance of the security. It is actually a component of Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)
What does it mean when the beta of a stock is negative?
The Stock Beta can have three types of values: Beta < 0: If the Beta is negative, then this implies an inverse relationship between the stock and the underlying market or the benchmark in comparison. Both stock and the market or the benchmark will move in the opposite direction. Beta = 0: If the Beta is equal to zero, ...
What does a beta of 1 mean?
Beta of 1 implies that the volatility of the stock is exactly the same as that of the underlying market or the index in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Beta of greater than 1 implies that the stock is more volatile than the underlying market or index. A negative Beta is possible but highly unlikely.
What does it mean when the beta is greater than zero?
Beta > 0: If the Beta is greater than zero, then there is a strong direct relationship between the stock and the underlying market or the benchmark. Both stock and the market or the benchmark will move in the same direction. Some further insight is as follows:
What does it mean when the beta is 0?
Beta = 0: If the Beta is equal to zero, then this implies that there is no relation between the movement of the returns of the stock and the market or the benchmark, and hence both are too dissimilar to have any common pattern in price movements . Beta > 0: If the Beta is greater than zero, then there is a strong direct relationship between ...
Is a negative beta of gold a good thing?
A negative Beta is possible but highly unlikely. Most investors believe that gold and stock based on gold tend to perform better when the market dives. Whereas a Beta of zero is possible in the case of government bonds acting as risk-free securities providing a low yield to the investors.
What is beta in stock market?
Beta is a numeric value that indicates the level of fluctuations of a security (stock) compared to the level of volatility in the overall stock market. The value is gotten by dividing the covariance of the security’s returns and the market’s returns by the variance of the market’s returns over a specified period.
What is the beta value of a stock?
A security that has a beta value of more than 1.0 has higher price volatility than the market benchmark index. So, a security can increase the risk of your portfolio, but it comes with higher expected returns. For example, a stock with a beta value of 1.2 is estimated to be 20% more volatile than the general market, but it is also expected to yield more returns to compensate for the extra risk.
What is leverage beta?
It includes both business risk and the risk that comes from taking on debt and shows how sensitive a security might be to macro-market risks. For example, a company with a β of 1.3 denotes returns that are 130% as volatile as the market it is being compared to.
What does a negative beta mean?
A negative beta value indicates that the asset’s price maintains an inverse relationship with the market. A security with a beta value of -1 is considered to be inversely correlated to the market benchmark.
What does a beta of 1.0 mean?
A beta value that is less than 1.0 indicates that the asset is less volatile than the market benchmark index. When you have a portfolio of such an asset, you would be assuming less risk than the market, but your expected returns would also be lower. Utility stocks tend to have low beta values.
What does 1.0 mean in stock?
When a stock or a fund has a beta value of 1.0, it entails that its price fluctuations closely mimic that of the market benchmark. So, adding a security to your portfolio does not add any risk above that of the market benchmark, and as such, it is not expected to offer extra returns above that of the market benchmark.
Why is the beta value zero?
If the fluctuations in an asset do not correlate with that of the benchmark, the beta value would be zero because the covariance of the asset’s returns with the market’s returns would be zero.
Why is beta important?
It’s important to understand that beta helps fill in some information on a company, but it doesn’t provide all the information.
What is a beta of one?
Stocks with a beta of one are perfect mirrors of the overall stock market. These will often be ETFs or index funds that track the market. SPY, the ETF trust, has a beta of 1. Some ETFs are even taking advantage of beta to improve gains.
What happens when beta reaches zero?
When beta reaches zero we will have assets that are not related to the market whatsoever. Some people like to call cash a 0 beta asset because it won’t change no matter which way the market goes.
What happens when beta falls below one?
When beta falls below one and towards zero you get the interesting situation where the asset correlates less and less with the overall market. These are normally going to be robust industries like utility companies. They could also be global companies that grow in many different markets. Two such companies are Dominion Energy (D) that has a beta of 0.35, and PepsiCo (PEP) that has a beta of 0.61.
What is Alpha in investing?
Alpha is represented by the greek character ɑ and it helps investors understand how well an asset has performed against a benchmark.
What are the risks of investing in stocks?
There are different types of risk in the stock market. Some risks you won’t be able to do much to avoid. These are called systematic risks and include things like a market crash. No matter how much you diversify your portfolio, if the whole market tanks, you are going to see your value shrink.
Knowing what Beta is
First off before we even get into what is Beta more important question is why would you want to know this why? Why would you want to know what it’s all about? Well the thing is, what beta really tells you, is it tells you the volatility of a certain stock or security.
Applying Beta to your stock picks
It means that if you’re looking for a stable company, if you’re for looking for a stock that does not whipsaw around a lot, if you’re looking for a stock that moves in a nice line fashion then you want a smaller beta.
An in-depth understanding of Beta in the stock market
Let’s look at beta in more in-depth. Basically, the stock market itself, the market itself has a beta of 1 so if we have the market as a beta of 1, this is how it moves. So let’s just pretend that this angle in this volatility is one.
Beta for the popular stocks
Here, what I’ve actually took a moment to do is write down the different Betas for different companies. Apple, here as you can see we have a beta of 1.06, so what does that mean? That means that it moves very similar to the stock market especially now that had the stock split and so forth.
Summing-up
In the end what does this mean and what does it do to help you choose stocks, well if you’re not a great picker, if you’re not looking at technical analysis as much, one of the ways to see how violent a stock moves is to look at this Beta.
What does beta mean in stocks?
Beta indicates how volatile a stock's price has been in comparison to the market as a whole. A high alpha is always good. A high beta may be preferred by an investor in growth stocks but shunned by investors who seek steady returns and lower risk. 1:26.
What is beta in investing?
Beta: An Overview. Alpha and beta are two of the key measurements used to evaluate the performance of a stock, a fund, or an investment portfolio. Alpha measures the amount that the investment has returned in comparison to the market index or other broad benchmark that it is compared against. Beta measures the relative volatility of an investment. ...
What does it mean when a stock has a beta of 1.5?
If a stock's beta is 1.5, it is considered to be 50% more volatile than the overall market. Like alpha, beta is a historical number.
What is the purpose of beta?
Beta measures the relative volatility of an investment. It is an indication of its relative risk. Alpha and beta are standard calculations that are used to evaluate an investment portfolio’s returns, along with standard deviation, R-squared, and the Sharpe ratio .
What is the formula for beta?
Formula for Beta. Covariance is used to measure the correlation in price moves of any two stocks. A positive covariance means the stocks tend to move in lockstep, while a negative covariance means they move in opposite directions. Variance refers to how far a stock moves relative to its mean.
What does alpha of 1.0 mean?
An alpha of 1.0 means the investment outperformed its benchmark index by 1%. An alpha of -1.0 means the investment underperformed its benchmark index by 1%. If the alpha is zero, its return matched the benchmark. Note, alpha is a historical number.
Calculating Beta
- Beta is calculated using regression analysis. Numerically, it represents the tendency for a security's returns to respond to swings in the market. The formula for calculating beta is the covariance of the return of an asset with the return of the benchmarkdivided by the variance of t…
The Advantages of Beta
- To followers of CAPM, beta is useful. A stock's price variability is important to consider when assessing risk. If you think about risk as the possibility of a stock losing its value, beta has appeal as a proxy for risk. Intuitively, it makes plenty of sense. Think of an early-stage technology stock with a price that bounces up and down more than the market. It's hard not to think that stock wil…
The Disadvantages of Beta
- If you are investing based on a stock's fundamentals, beta has plenty of shortcomings. For starters, beta doesn't incorporate new information. Consider a utility company: let's call it Company X. Company X has been considered a defensive stockwith a low beta. When it entered the merchant energy business and assumed more debt, X's historic beta no longer captured the …
Assessing Risk
- The well-worn definition of risk is the possibility of suffering a loss. Of course, when investors consider risk, they are thinking about the chance that the stock they buy will decrease in value. The trouble is that beta, as a proxy for risk, doesn't distinguish between upside and downsideprice movements. For most investors, downside movements are a risk, while upside ones mean oppor…
The Bottom Line
- Ultimately, it's important for investors to make the distinction between short-term risk—where beta and price volatility are useful—and longer-term, fundamental risk, where big-picture risk factors are more telling. High betas may mean price volatility over the near term, but they don't always rule out long-term opportunities.
Examples of Beta
Calculation
- Below is an Excel β calculator that you can download and use to calculate β on your own. β can easily be calculated in Excel using the Slope function. Follow these steps to calculate β in Excel: 1. Obtain the weekly prices of the stock 2. Obtain the weekly prices of the market index (i.e., S&P 500 Index) 3. Calculate the weekly returns of the stock 4. Calculate the weekly returns of the market i…
What Are Equity Beta and Asset Beta?
- Levered beta, also known as equity beta or stock beta, is the volatility of returns for a stock, taking into account the impact of the company’s leverage from its capital structure. It compares the volatility (risk) of a levered company to the risk of the market. Levered beta includes both business risk and the risk that comes from taking on debt. ...
Levered Beta vs Unlevered Beta
- Levered beta (equity beta) is a measurement that compares the volatility of returns of a company’s stock against those of the broader market. In other words, it is a measure of risk, and it includes the impact of a company’s capital structure and leverage. Equity beta allows investors to assess how sensitive a security might be to macro-market risks. For example, a company with a …
Calculation of Levered Beta
- There are two ways to estimate the levered beta of a stock. The first, and simplest, way is to use the company’s historical β or just select the company’s beta from Bloomberg. The second, and more popular, way is to make a new estimate for β using public company comparables. To use the comparables approach, the β of comparable companies is taken from Bloomberg and the un…
Interpreting Beta
- A security’s β should only be used when its high R-squared value is higher than the benchmark. The R-squared value measures the percentage of variation in the share price of a security that can be explained by movements in the benchmark index. For example, a gold ETF will show a low β and R-squared in relation to a benchmark equity index, as gold is negatively correlated with equit…
Related Readings
- Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to beta (β) of an investment security. To continue learning and advancing your career these additional resources will be helpful: 1. Types of Valuation Multiples 2. Analysis of Financial Statements 3. Leverage Ratios 4. Valuation Methods