💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 4000.gmi captured on 2023-06-16 at 19:06:43. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2012-06-01 15:31:01
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.
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.
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.
A beta of 1.0 indicates that the investment's price will move in lock-step with
the market. A beta of less than 1.0 indicates that the investment will be less
volatile than the market, and, correspondingly, a beta of more than 1.0
indicates that the investment's price will be more volatile than the market.
For example, if a fund portfolio's beta is 1.2, it's theoretically 20% more
volatile than the market.
Conservative investors looking to preserve capital should focus on securities
and fund portfolios with low betas, whereas those investors willing to take on
more risk in search of higher returns should look for high beta investments.
R-Squared
R-Squared is a statistical measure that represents the percentage of a fund
portfolio's or security's movements that can be explained by movements in a
benchmark index. For fixed-income securities and their corresponding mutual
funds, the benchmark is the U.S. Treasury Bill, and, likewise with equities and
equity funds, the benchmark is the S&P 500 Index.
R-squared values range from 0 to 100. According to Morningstar, a mutual fund
with an R-squared value between 85 and 100 has a performance record that is
closely correlated to the index. A fund rated 70 or less would not perform like
the index.
Mutual fund investors should avoid actively managed funds with high R-squared
ratios, which are generally criticized by analysts as being "closet" index
funds. In these cases, why pay the higher fees for so-called professional
management when you can get the same or better results from an index fund?
Standard Deviation
Standard deviation measures the dispersion of data from its mean. In plain
English, the more that data is spread apart, the higher the difference is from
the norm. In finance, standard deviation is applied to the annual rate of
return of an investment to measure its volatility (risk). A volatile stock
would have a high standard deviation. With mutual funds, the standard deviation
tells us how much the return on a fund is deviating from the expected returns
based on its historical performance.
Sharpe Ratio
Developed by Nobel laureate economist William Sharpe, this ratio measures
risk-adjusted performance. It is calculated by subtracting the risk-free rate
of return (U.S. Treasury Bond) from the rate of return for an investment and
dividing the result by the investment's standard deviation of its return.
The Sharpe ratio tells investors whether an investment's returns are due to
smart investment decisions or the result of excess risk. This measurement is
very useful because although one portfolio or security can reap higher returns
than its peers, it is only a good investment if those higher returns do not
come with too much additional risk. The greater an investment's Sharpe ratio,
the better its risk-adjusted performance.
The Bottom Line
Many investors tend to focus exclusively on investment return, with little
concern for investment risk. The five risk measures we have just discussed can
provide some balance to the risk-return equation. The good news for investors
is that these indicators are calculated for them and are available on several
financial websites, as well as being incorporated into many investment research
reports. As useful as these measurements are, keep in mind that when
considering a stock, bond or mutual fund investment, volatility risk is just
one of the factors you should be considering that can affect the quality of an
investment.
by Richard Loth