Beta Calculator

How Much Does This Asset Move When the Market Moves?

Beta measures an asset's volatility relative to the broader market by comparing how the two have moved together historically. It's a statistical relationship, not a prediction — built from the covariance between an asset's returns and the market's returns, scaled by how much the market itself varies.

The Formula

Covariance measures how the asset's returns and the market's returns move together across the same periods; variance measures how much the market alone fluctuates. Dividing one by the other tells you, on average, how many percentage points the asset tends to move for every one-point move in the market.

Reading the Result

• Beta > 1 — the asset has historically been more volatile than the market; it tends to amplify market moves in both directions.
• Beta < 1 — the asset has historically been less volatile than the market, dampening moves rather than amplifying them.
• Beta = 1 — the asset has moved in line with the market on average.
• Negative beta — rare, but indicates the asset has historically moved opposite to the market — some hedges and certain commodities can behave this way.

Worked Example

Five periods of paired asset and market returns (%): asset = 2.5, 3.1, -1.2, 4.0, -2.0; market = 1.8, 2.5, -0.9, 3.0, -1.5.

A beta of roughly 1.32 here means the asset moved about 32% more sharply than the market across this sample — more volatile in both directions.

How to Use This Calculator

1. Enter the Asset Returns as a comma-separated list of periodic returns (e.g. monthly or quarterly percentages).
2. Enter the matching Market Returns for the same periods, in the same order.
3. Select Calculate to see the calculated beta and its interpretation.

Related Calculations

Use beta as an input to measure risk-adjusted outperformance with the Alpha Calculator, or check volatility on its own with the Risk Calculator.