Regardless, beta is not synonymous with volatility
Recall that all this started with:
Did you notice that WCOM has become a lot more volatile lately?
And when given, a 'so what' response, the followup was:
WCOM's beta must have doubled if not tripled over the past couple of month.
Are you now claiming this to be a non sequitur?
'Twould be a slick backtrack if it were, but Standard & Poor's appears to think you had it right the first time:
quicken.excite.com
Beta is widely used to measure the volatility of a mutual fund or stock's price relative to the general market.
And finally:
I don't how frequently Yahoo! Finance updates the beta's
Well, they get them straight from Market Guide, and the numbers do match those on Market Guide's site. Mind you, Market Guide goes as far back as five years in calculating beta, so if you use a shorter term for beta that may be the reason for any discrepancy. It would also explain, given WCOM's meteoric rise over that time frame, why its beta might be so high. |
