Locating Historical Betas on Companies

5 Years or 15 Years

Example: Use Compustat Research Insight to find betas for the last 5 years (monthly) for the Ford Motor company.

Choose "Research Assistant" from the opening screen.

 

Choose a company by name or ticker symbol and choose Next at the bottom of the dialog box.

 

Choose Next on the screen that includes the company you have selected.

 

Choose Next to use Report Assistant to display your results.

 

Choose Items vs. Time For a Company to create a report. Click Next.

 

Make sure that Valuation is selected in the "Item Groups" box in the upper left of the screen and choose Beta from the Items list. Add it to the Selected Items box. Select Next when done. To change the options in the Item Groups to additional search categories, click on the Customize... button.

 

You can check off as many as 9 Custom Item Groups to use for searching. Within each item group there is a wide range of Items (see above example for Valuation).

 

Choose Absolute as the format for period display and choose a range of time for 5 years. Choose Finish when done.

 

Finished report on 5 years of monthly Betas for Ford Motor Company:

To export as a text file to then convert to excel, click on "File" at the top left part of the screen, then "Save as".

 

For historical beta back 15 years (monthly) create a formula to use in Report Assistant.

In Research Insight, from the Databases menu choose Concept.

 

Click New Concept, type a name for the new concept about to be created (e.g., BETA1), and hit Enter key.

 

When asked if the concept should be added to the data dictionary click OK.

 

Enter Description of Historical Beta Calculation and the following Formula, then click Accept, then click Close: (@pcor(trt1m,"I0003":trt1m,-59,0)*@pstd(trt1m,-59,0))/(@pstd("i0003":trt1m,-59,0))

 

In Report Assistant (as shown in the Ford example above,) when specifying items (Report Assistant Step 2,) click Look Up. In the Select Item Category choose User then select the formula created for historical beta and click Paste.

In Report Assistant Step 3 choose Absolute as the format for period display and choose a range of time back 15 years. Choose Finish when done.