How Does Mexco Energy Corporation (NYSEMKT:MXC) Affect Your Portfolio Returns?
If you’re interested in Mexco Energy Corporation (NYSEMKT:MXC), then you might want to consider its beta (a measure of share price volatility) in order to understand how the stock could impact your portfolio. 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 type is company specific volatility. Investors use diversification across uncorrelated stocks to reduce this kind of price volatility across the portfolio. 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 greater than one is more sensitive to broader market movements than a stock with a beta of less than one.
See our latest analysis for Mexco Energy
What MXC’s beta value tells investors
Zooming in on Mexco Energy, we see it has a five year beta of 0.81. This is below 1, so historically its share price has been rather independent from the market. If history is a good guide, owning the stock should help ensure that your portfolio is not overly sensitive to market volatility. Share price volatility is well worth considering, but most long term investors consider the history of revenue and earnings growth to be more important. Take a look at how Mexco Energy fares in that regard, below.
Does MXC’s size influence the expected beta?
Mexco Energy is a rather small company. It has a market capitalisation of US$12m, which means it is probably under the radar of most investors. Very small companies often have a low beta value because their share prices are not well correlated with market volatility. This could be because the price is reacting to company specific events. Alternatively, the shares may not be actively traded.
What this means for you:
Since Mexco Energy is not heavily influenced by market moves, its share price is probably far more dependend on company specific developments. It could pay to take a closer look at metrics such as revenue growth, earnings growth, and debt. In order to fully understand whether MXC is a good investment for you, we also need to consider important company-specific fundamentals such as Mexco Energy’s financial health and performance track record. I urge you to continue your research by taking a look at the following:
- Financial Health: Are MXC’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.
- Past Track Record: Has MXC 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 MXC’s historicals for more clarity.
- Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
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].