Full Answer
How do you calculate beta for a stock?
To calculate the beta of a portfolio, follow the steps outlined below:
- Calculate the value of each stock you own in your portfolio by listing the number of shares you have multiplied by the current share price.
- After you’ve determined the value of each stock holding in the portfolio, calculate what proportion or share each stock represents in the portfolio.
- Multiply those proportions by the beta of each stock. ...
What is a good beta value for a stock?
- Market value: $9.1 billion
- Dividend yield: N/A
- Forward P/E ratio: 13.4
- Analysts' ratings: 6 Strong Buy, 3 Buy, 0 Hold, 1 Sell, 0 Strong Sell
- Analysts' consensus recommendation: 1.60 (Buy)
What would be considered a high beta on a stock?
- 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 factors determine the beta of a stock?
Beta is determined by the cyclicality of a firm's revenues. This cyclicality is magnified by the firm's operating and financial leverage. (1) Revenues. The cyclicality of a firm's sales is an important factor in determining beta. In general, stock prices will rise when the economy expands and will fall when the economy contracts.
What should beta be for stocks?
Key Takeaways 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 1.35 mean?
The market is described as having a beta of 1. The beta for a stock describes how much the stock's price moves compared to the market. If a stock has a beta above 1, it's more volatile than the overall market. For example, if an asset has a beta of 1.3, it's theoretically 30% more volatile than the market.
What does a 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 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 if beta is less than 1?
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.
What does a beta of 0.6 mean?
Teva Pharmaceutical Industry's 2.49 beta, for example, indicates that the stock is expected to be more than twice as volatile than the market, while Intel's beta of 0.6 means the stock will typically move at a rate that's only about half that the broader market (data from Yahoo Finance, June 13, 2019).
What is considered a high beta?
What are high-beta stocks? A high-beta stock, quite simply, is a stock that has been much more volatile than the index it's being measured against. A stock with a beta above 2 -- meaning that the stock will typically move twice as much as the market does -- is generally considered a high-beta stock.
What's a high beta stock?
High beta stocks are those that are positively correlated with returns of the S&P 500, but at an amplified magnitude. Because of this amplification, these stocks tend to outperform in bull markets, but can greatly underperform in bear markets.
What does a beta of 0.9 mean?
The higher a fund's beta, the more volatile it has been relative to its benchmark. A beta that is greater than 1.0 means that the fund is more volatile than the benchmark index. A beta of less than 1.0 means that the fund is less volatile than the index.
Do you want a high or low beta?
Stocks with a value greater than 1 are more volatile than the market (meaning they will generally go up more than the market goes up, and go down more than the market goes down). Stocks with a beta of less than 1 have a smoother ride as their moves are more muted than the market's.
What is considered a low beta stock?
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. For example, utility stocks often have low betas because they tend to move more slowly than market averages.
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 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.
What Is the Beta?
The value of any stock index , such as the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, moves up and down constantly. At the end of the trading day, we conclude that "the markets" were up or down. An investor considering buying a particular stock may want to know whether that stock moves up and down just as sharply as stocks in general. It may be inclined to hold its value on a bad day or get stuck in a rut when most stocks are rising.
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.
Why is beta important?
Using beta to understand a security's volatility can help you choose the securities that meet your criteria for risk.
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 a young technology company?
Many young technology companies that trade on the Nasdaq stocks have a beta greater than 1. Many utility sector stocks have a beta of less than 1.
What does beta mean in investing?
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 downside price movements. For most investors, downside movements are a risk, while upside ones mean opportunity.
What Is Beta?
Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility in relation to the overall market. By definition, the market, such as the S&P 500 Index, has a beta of 1.0, and individual stocks are ranked according to how much they deviate from the market.
How should investors assess risk in the stocks that they buy or sell?
How should investors assess risk in the stocks that they buy or sell? While the concept of risk is hard to factor in stock analysis and valuation, one of the most popular indicators is a statistical measure called beta. Analysts use it often when they want to determine a stock's risk profile. However, while beta does say something about price risk, it has its limits for investors looking to determine fundamental risk factors.
Why do value investors dislike beta?
Value investors scorn the idea of beta because it implies that a stock that has fallen sharply in value is riskier than it was before it fell. A value investor would argue that a company represents a lower-risk investment after it falls in value—investors can get the same stock at a lower price despite the rise in the stock's beta following its decline. Beta says nothing about the price paid for the stock in relation to fundamental factors like changes in company leadership, new product discoveries, or future cash flows.
What is beta in CAPM?
Beta is a component of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which is used to calculate the cost of equity funding. The CAPM formula uses the total average market return and the beta value of the stock to determine the rate of return that shareholders might reasonably expect based on perceived investment risk.
Why is beta important?
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.
Why do analysts use beta?
Analysts use it often when they want to determine a stock's risk profile. However, while beta does say something about price risk, it has its limits for investors looking to determine fundamental risk factors.
What does beta mean in Bloomberg?
When you look up a company’s beta on Bloomberg, the default number you see is levered, and it reflects the debt of that company. Since each company’s capital structure is different, an analyst will often want to look at how “risky” the assets of a company are regardless of the percentage of its debt or equity funding.
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.
What is leverage 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 β of 1.5 denotes returns that are 150% as volatile as the market it is being compared to.
How to find 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 unlevered beta for each company is calculated.
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 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.
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
What is beta in stock?
Beta can be a useful metric to determine how a stock’s price may move in relation to the overall market by examining its past performance. It can also be a useful indicator of risk, especially for investors who make trades frequently. However, beta has its limitations.
How to find the beta of a stock?
Now, use a covariance formula to compare how the stock’s and index’s prices move in relation to each other. Divide this covariance result by the variance of only the index. This allows you to see how the stock and index prices moved in relation to one another, relative to how the index price moved on its own. Therefore, you get beta.
Why is beta high?
A stock with a high beta indicates it’s more volatile than the overall market and can react with dramatic share-price changes amid market swings. So if you don’t have the stomach for vast price changes, you may want to avoid investing in high-beta stocks.
What does beta mean in stock market?
Beta is represented as a number. Based on beta analysis, the overall stock markethas a beta of 1. And the beta of individual stocks determines how far they deviate from the broader market. A stock with a beta equal to 1 assumes its price moves hand-in-hand with the market.
What does it mean when a stock has a beta of less than 1?
If the stock has a beta less than 1, you can conclude that it’s less volatile than the overall market. This means that adding it to your portfolio may mitigate risk and may help in diversifying your investments.
How to make a good investment decision?
Tips on Making Better Investment Decisions 1 Measuring your risk tolerance and building your portfolio can be difficult tasks. So we created an asset-allocation calculator to help you. It gives you some examples of what appropriate asset mixes may be based on your risk tolerance. 2 Whether you’re a beginner or building your investing acumen, you can learn from the best books for investors. 3 Understanding beta and everything else involved with picking the right stocks can be a difficult process. This is why the guidance of a financial advisor can come in handy when making investing decisions. To help, we developed our interactive financial advisor matching tool. It links you with up to three local advisors. You can view their profiles and compare their qualifications before deciding to work with one.
What is beta in investing?
Nonetheless, beta can be one of many useful tools to have when evaluating your investments. So it’s important to at least calculate the beta of a stock you may be interested in purchasing. Before You Calculate Beta. Remember, beta measures how volatile a stock’s price may be in relation to a market benchmark. ...
What is beta in stock?
Beta can be a useful metric to determine how a stock’s price may move in relation to the overall market by examining its past performance. It can also be a useful indicator of risk, especially for investors who make trades frequently. However, beta has its limitations.
How to find the beta of a stock?
Now, use a covariance formula to compare how the stock’s and index’s prices move in relation to each other. Divide this covariance result by the variance of only the index. This allows you to see how the stock and index prices moved in relation to one another, relative to how the index price moved on its own. Therefore, you get beta.
What does beta mean in stock market?
Beta is represented as a number. Based on beta analysis, the overall stock market has a beta of 1. And the beta of individual stocks determines how far they deviate from the broader market. A stock with a beta equal to 1 assumes its price moves hand-in-hand with the market.
What does a high beta mean in stocks?
Beta measures how volatile a stock is in relation to the broader stock market over time. A stock with a high beta indicates it’s more volatile than the overall market and can react with dramatic share-price changes amid market swings. So if you don’t have the stomach for vast price changes, you may want to avoid investing in high-beta stocks.
What does a stock's beta mean?
A stock with a beta greater than 1 may indicate that it’s more volatile than the market. However, this could also mean it has the potential for stronger returns. Say your benchmark, or the market to which you’re comparing a stock, is the S&P 500. If the stock you’re analyzing has a beta of 2, that means the stock is twice as volatile as the market. If the S&P 500 goes up by 10% next year, you can expect the stock price to go up by 20%. However, it could plummet by just as much if the S&P 500 goes down by 10%.
What does it mean when a beta is below 1?
Betas can also dip below 1 into negative territory. This indicates that the stock may respond in the opposite direction of the overall market. Using the previous example, you could expect the stock’s price to go up if the S&P 500 goes down and vice versa.
What does it mean to have a high beta?
In essence, it would have a high beta and mean more risk.
What does beta mean in investing?
Beta represents systemic risk – risk that can’t be diluted by diversification of your investment portfolios. There are a few things to keep in mind when evaluating beta. – Beta levels can change over time. – Beta is not necessarily a complete and comprehensive measure of risk. – Beta measures co-movement, not volatility.
What is beta in investment?
Beta is the measurement of an asset’s or portfolio’s risk in relation to the rest of the market (Note: This is the way it is supposed to be used according to the accepted principles. Like most other value investors, we disagree that beta describes the actual risk in an investment (See: beta finance ).
How does the beta work?
So, here’s how it works. The market, by default, has a beta measurement of 1.0. Individual stocks are ranked according to how they differ from the market baseline. If a stock swings more than the market baseline, then it has a higher beta. If it swings less, then it has lower beta.
How to increase or decrease beta?
You can increase or decrease the beta of your portfolio by increasing or decreasing leverage in your portfolio. Portfolio betas can be managed down, even if the individual stock betas are high, by ensuring that individual stocks are uncorrelated and the risks hedge out.
Why is beta important?
Beta is useful when determining whether the risk is worth the potential return on an investment. Higher-beta stocks are riskier, but they typically have the chance for greater return than lower-beta, lower-risk stocks. To give an example, a stock with a beta of 1.75 will offer 1.75 times the typical market return.
What are the disadvantages of beta?
– Beta looks backwards, which makes it less useful for predicting future stock movements. – Beta doesn’t incorporate or account for new information. – For long term investments, beta isn’t as useful, since it can change greatly over time.
Does a high beta stock appreciate over time?
However, if the stock market as a whole appreciates over time, the high beta stock will also appreciate over time (as long as the stock stays correlated with the market). If you are an investor that has low tolerance for price swings, a high beta stock will not be a comfortable place to be for you.
What does beta mean in stock market?
Beta is a statistical value that measures rate of price changes in a specific stock versus the rate of price change in the overall stock market. This can be calculated by doing a regression of monthly price changes on the monthly price change of a broad market index like the S&P500 for example. What does it mean. If the beta value is 1 then it means that the rate of change in stock prices is the same as the overall market. If the beta is greater than 1, for example 1.25 it means that stock X price changes are 25 percent greater than the overall market price changes. The stock is said to be mor
What is beta in investing?
Beta is a measure of the volatility, or systematic risk, of a security or a portfolio in comparison to the market as a whole. Beta is used in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which calculates the expected return of an asset based on its beta and expected market returns. Beta is also known as the beta coefficient.
What does it mean when the beta coefficient is more than 1?
When the beta coefficient is more than 1, then it means that the individual stock is more volatile than the overall market. Likewise, when the beta coefficient is lower than 1, then the stock volatility is less than that of the overall market’s volatility.
Why are high beta stocks so popular?
High beta stocks are favorites of traders, since they move faster than the market, both when going up and going down.
What does the beta symbol mean?
Beta is a Greek alphabet. In trading this symbol indicates the correlation between stock price and index.
What does it mean when a stock has a negative beta?
A negative beta stock generally moves in the opposite direction from the rest of the stock market.
What is the pace at which stock prices move in relation to the overall market called?
The pace at which stock price move in relation to the overall market (Sensex / Nifty) is called beta.
What Is Beta?
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 the return of the benchmark over a certain period. Beta=CovarianceVariance\text{Beta} = \frac{\text…
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