Beta measures the volatility (risk) of a
stock or fund compared to the overall market.
A Beta above zero, but less than one
tells you that a stock should be less volatile than the
market (S&P 500), a value of one says the stock typically moves with the market,
and above one signals higher volatility or risk.
For example, Beta of 2.0 predicts that a
stock would likely be twice as volatile as the market, while
Beta of 0.5 predicts half as volatile. Negative Beta says that the stock
generally moves opposite to the overall market, down in an up
market, and vice versa.
Typically, you'd do best with high-beta
stocks (> 1.0) in strong up markets, and low-beta (below
1.0) in down markets. However, if like most of us, you
aren't that good at predicting the future, you'd achieve the
best overall risk-adjusted returns by sticking with stock's
with below 1.0 betas.
We used a screen to find all low Beta
(0 to 0.99) stocks paying 3.0% minimum dividend
yields. We found more than 500 stocks meeting those requirements.
However, only 46 met the additional
requirements that we added to filter out the riskiest bets.
Those are listed below, along with additional data that you
may find useful.
