Please post a reply to this post on whether you agree or disagree and why in two paragraphs and provide one APA reference.

The concept of beta is fairly simple; it's a measure of individual stock risk relative to the overall risk of the stock market. It's sometimes referred to as financial elasticity. The measure is just one of several values that stock analysts use to get a better feel for a stock's risk profile. As we'll see later on in our discussion, the beta value is calculated using price movements of the stock we're analyzing. Those movements are then compared to the movements of an overall market indicator, such as a market index, over the same period of time.

Beta is a measure of the volatility, or systematic risk, of a security or a portfolio in comparison to the market as a whole. In other words, beta gives a sense of a stock's market risk compared to the greater market. Beta is also used to compare a stock's market risk to that of other stocks. Investment analysts use the Greek letter '' to represent beta. Beta is used in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), as we described in the previous section.

Beta is calculated using regression analysis, and you can think of beta as the tendency of a security's returns to respond to swings in the market. A beta of 1 indicates that the security's price will move with the market. A beta of less than 1 means that the security will be less volatile than the market. A beta of greater than 1 indicates that the security's price will be more volatile than the market. For example, if a stock's beta is 1.2, it's theoretically 20% more volatile than the market.

Many utility stocks have a beta of less than 1. Conversely, most high-tech Nasdaq-based stocks have a beta greater than 1, offering the possibility of a higher rate of return, but also posing more risk. Beta values are fairly easy to interpret too. If the stock's price experiences movements that are greater - more volatile - than the stock market, then the beta value will be greater than 1. If a stock's price movements, or swings, are less than those of the market, then the beta value will be less than 1. Since increased volatility of stock price means more risk to the investor, it's reasonable to expect greater returns from stocks with betas over 1. The reverse is true if a stock's beta is less than 1; expect less volatility, lower risk, and therefore lower overall returns.