Sunday, September 28, 2025

Beta - A Measure of Market Risk

 


Friends Let’s Learn about Beta.

1.    What is Beta

Simply we can say that Beta is a Relative Risk Measure of Riskiness of a business in Relation to Market.

Beta tells that how much a stock is risky as compare to the market. Market’s Beta is always 1 Then is any company’s beta is more than 1 then it means that company is riskier than market and if it is less than 1 then it means the company is less risky than market.

Beta tells that how much a stock moves compared to the overall Market.

2.    Simple Example

Market means Market Index Like Nifty 50 or Sensex, now as mentioned Nifty 50 or Sensex Beta is 1

Case 1. If any company’s Beta is 1.5 than if market goes 10% up than stock goes up 15% (more risky, moves faster)

Case 2. If any company’s Beta is 0.5 than if market goes 10% up than stock goes up 5% (less risky, moves slower)

Case 3. If any company’s Beta is negative means if market will go up than stock will go down. Stock actions opposite to market (like gold or hedging assets).

3.    Why Beta is Important?

CAPM model – Beta is used in CAPM model to calculate Expected return of a stock (Ke = Cost of Equity)

Investors – Beta helps investors to take decision if the stock is risky or safe for investing purpose.

Portfolio Management – Beta is useful to analyse the risk and balance or diversify the risk.

4.    Beta calculation methods

A)     Historical Beta Calculation (Most Common) - Collect past returns of stock and past returns of market index (like Sensex or Nifty 50). And use the below formula using MS Excel (covariance ÷ variance).


            ​Covariance → How stock and market move together.

Variance → How much the market itself moves.

B)     Regression Method (Line Slope Method)

·       Plot stock returns (Y-axis) vs market returns (X-axis).

·       Draw a line of best fit (regression line).

·       The slope of the line = Beta.

·       This is what Bloomberg, Money control, Yahoo Finance use.



C)     Bottom-up Beta (for new companies / private firms)

 

·       If company is start up or a new company and it is not listed in stock market then we take industry Beta.

·       Adjust it with company’s debt and equity (because risk changes due to leverage changes).

Formula used: 

Unlevered Beta = Industry Beta ÷ (1 + (Debt/Equity))

Levered Beta = Unlevered Beta × (1 + (Debt/Equity of company)

 

D)     Proxy Method (Quick Estimate)

If detailed data is not available, use similar company’s Beta as proxy.


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Thank you for reading & keep learning.   


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