If you own shares in Cavco Industries,my decking is very slippery when wet Inc. (

NASDAQ:CVCO

) then it’s worth thinking about how it contributes to the volatility of your portfolio, overall. In finance, Beta is a measure of volatility. Volatility is considered to be a measure of risk in modern finance theory. Investors may think of volatility as falling into two main categories. The first category is company specific volatility. This can be dealt with by limiting your exposure to any particular stock. The second sort is caused by the natural volatility of markets, overall. For example, certain macroeconomic events will impact (virtually) all stocks on the market.

Some stocks see their prices move in concert with the market. Others tend towards stronger, gentler or unrelated price movements. 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 Cavco Industries

What does CVCO’s beta value mean to investors?

Looking at the last five years, Cavco Industries has a beta of 1.62. The fact that this is well above 1 indicates that its share price movements have shown sensitivity to overall market volatility. Based on this history, investors should be aware that Cavco Industries are likely to rise strongly in times of greed, but sell off in times of fear. Many would argue that beta is useful in position sizing, but fundamental metrics such as revenue and earnings are more important overall. You can see Cavco Industries’s revenue and earnings in the image below.

NasdaqGS:CVCO Income Statement Export January 1st 19

Could CVCO’s size cause it to be more volatile?

Cavco Industries is a small company, but not tiny and little known. It has a market capitalisation of US$1.2b, which means it would be on the radar of intstitutional investors. It’s not particularly surprising that it has a higher beta than the overall market. That’s because it takes less money to influence the share price of a smaller company, than a bigger company.

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What this means for you:

Since Cavco Industries tends to moves up when the market is going up, and down when it’s going down, potential investors may wish to reflect on the overall market, when considering the stock. This article aims to educate investors about beta values, but it’s well worth looking at important company-specific fundamentals such as Cavco Industries’s financial health and performance track record. I highly recommend you dive deeper by considering the following:

Future Outlook

: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for CVCO’s future growth? Take a look at our

free research report of analyst consensus

for CVCO’s outlook.

Past Track Record

: Has CVCO been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at

the free visual representations of CVCO’s historicals

for more clarity.

Other Interesting Stocks

: It’s worth checking to see how CVCO measures up against other companies on valuation. You could start with this

free list of prospective options

.

To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at

[email protected]

.

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