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If you own shares in Genworth Mortgage Insurance Australia Limited (ASX:GMA) then it's worth thinking about how it contributes to the volatility of your portfolio, overall. In finance, Beta is a measure of volatility. Modern finance theory considers volatility to be a measure of risk, and there are two main types of price volatility. The first category is company specific volatility. This can be dealt with by limiting your exposure to any particular stock. The second type is the broader market volatility, which you cannot diversify away, since it arises from macroeconomic factors which directly affects all the stocks on the market.
Some stocks are more sensitive to general market forces than others. Beta is a widely used metric to measure a stock's exposure to market risk (volatility). Before we go on, it's worth noting that Warren Buffett pointed out in his 2014 letter to shareholders that 'volatility is far from synonymous with risk.' Having said that, beta can still be rather useful. The first thing to understand about beta is that the beta of the overall market is one. A stock with a beta below one is either less volatile than the market, or more volatile but not corellated with the overall market. In comparison a stock with a beta of over one tends to be move in a similar direction to the market in the long term, but with greater changes in price.
Check out our latest analysis for Genworth Mortgage Insurance Australia
What does GMA's beta value mean to investors?
With a beta of 0.95, (which is quite close to 1) the share price of Genworth Mortgage Insurance Australia has historically been about as voltile as the broader market. If the future looks like the past, we could therefore consider it likely that the stock price will experience share price volatility that is roughly similar to the overall market. Beta is worth considering, but it's also important to consider whether Genworth Mortgage Insurance Australia is growing earnings and revenue. You can take a look for yourself, below.
How does GMA's size impact its beta?
Genworth Mortgage Insurance Australia is a small cap stock with a market capitalisation of AU$1.2b. Most companies this size are actively traded. It takes less capital to move the share price of small companies, and they are also more impacted by company specific events, so it's a bit of a surprise that the beta is so close to the overall market.