Beta (finance)

Beta is a measure of how much a stock moves in relation to the overall market. The stock market as a whole is given a score of 1. A stock with a score higher than 1 will rise faster than the stock market when the market goes up, and fall faster when the market goes down. A stock with a score of less than 1 will rise slower than the stock market when the market goes up, and fall slower when the market goes down. So if a stock has a high beta (positive or negative) it means that the stock moves a lot more than the average stock.