If you’re interested in Pernix Therapeutics Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PTX), 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. Modern finance theory considers volatility to be a measure of risk, and there are two main types of price volatility. 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 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.
See our latest analysis for Pernix Therapeutics Holdings
Zooming in on Pernix Therapeutics Holdings, we see it has a five year beta of 1.31. This is above 1, so historically its share price has been influenced by the broader volatility of the stock market the market. If the past is any guide, we would expect that Pernix Therapeutics Holdings shares will rise quicker than the markets in times of optimism, but fall faster in times of pessimism. Beta is worth considering, but it’s also important to consider whether Pernix Therapeutics Holdings is growing earnings and revenue. You can take a look for yourself, below.
Pernix Therapeutics Holdings is a rather small company. It has a market capitalisation of US$11.0m, which means it is probably under the radar of most investors. It takes less money to influence the share price of a very small company. This may explain the excess volatility implied by this beta value.
Beta only tells us that the Pernix Therapeutics Holdings share price is sensitive to broader market movements. This could indicate that it is a high growth company, or is heavily influenced by sentiment because it is speculative. Alternatively, it could have operating leverage in its business model. Ultimately, beta is an interesting metric, but there’s plenty more to learn. In order to fully understand whether PTX is a good investment for you, we also need to consider important company-specific fundamentals such as Pernix Therapeutics Holdings’s financial health and performance track record. I highly recommend you dive deeper by considering the following:
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
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