What does the beta of a stock mean?
Beta is the measurement of a stock’s volatility in relationship to the rest of the stock market. Volatility is the degree of price fluctuation of a share of stock. The Standard & Poor’s 500 tock index has a beta of 1.0. Any stock with a higher beta is more volatile than the market, while a stock with a lower beta can be expected to rise and fall in price more slowly than the overall market. For conservative investing, you should be looking at stocks with a beta lower than 1.0 and vice versa.
