|
|
There are five main indicators of investment risk that apply to the analysis of stocks, bonds and mutual fund portfolios. They are alpha, beta, r-squared, standard deviation and the Sharpe ratio. These statistical measures are historical predictors of investment risk/volatility and are all major components of modern portfolio theory (MPT). The MPT is a standard financial and academic methodology used for assessing the performance of equity, fixed-income and mutual fund investments by comparing them to market benchmarks.
All of these risk measurements are intended to help investors determine the risk-reward parameters of their investments. In this article, we'll give a brief explanation of each of these commonly used indicators.
1. Alpha
Alpha is a measure of an investment's performance on a risk-adjusted basis. It takes the volatility (price risk) of a security or fund portfolio and compares its risk-adjusted performance to a benchmark index. The excess return of the investment relative to the return of the benchmark index is its "alpha".
Simply stated, alpha is often considered to represent the value that a portfolio manager adds or subtracts from a fund portfolio's return. A positive alpha of 1.0 means the fund has outperformed its benchmark index by 1%. Correspondingly, a similar negative alpha would indicate an underperformance of 1%. For investors, the more positive an alpha is, the better it is. (To learn more, see Adding Alpha Without Adding Risk.)
2. Beta
Beta, also known as the "beta coefficient," 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 calculated using regression analysis, and you can think of it as the tendency of an investment's return to respond to swings in the market. By definition, the market has a beta of 1.0. Individual security and portfolio values are measured according to how they deviate from the market.
|
|
|
|
•