Equities and BETA formulas

Using Datastream you can calculate and download the BETA for 1 or more equities using a formula that looks like: REGB#(LN#(X/LAG#(X,1M)),LN#(Y/LAG#(Y,1M)),60M).

This is an example of the BETA formula which I mentioned in an earlier post.

It kan be difficult to look up the BETA for several equities using this formula if you want to do this for many equities. In Excel, however, it is easy to generate the correct formula for each equity (+ market) using the Concatenate function. You can see how I did this in a short movie here:

When you have the necessary formulas for the equities you can search and download the BETA in one go using the Request Table search tool which Datastream has (see the AFO in Excel). Just remember that you can copy the formulas in the column for the equities and you can leave the Data type Column empty.

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01:03 AM - 6 July 2010