What is beta in investing? Simply put, it’s how much a stock moves against the market. Semiconductor stocks, riding AI demand, report betas near 1.6—signaling aggressive price swings for active traders. The company said in the IPO filing that its ALIA CTOL electric aircraft has completed thousands of flights, covering nearly 83,000 nautical miles across operations in North America and Europe. The aircraft has been deployed by the U.S. military in training missions, and pilots from the Federal Aviation Administration have also flown it, Beta Technologies said in the IPO filing. That said, beta can still be a valuable metric, especially for investors who actively buy and sell stocks. It helps quantify market risk and provides a snapshot of a stock’s volatility compared to the broader market. The following are some of the pros and cons you might want to consider when it comes to using beta: In investing, beta measures a stock’s volatility relative to the overall market. A beta of 1 means it moves in line with the S&P 500, while tech stocks in 2024 like NVDA often show betas above 1.3, indicating higher risk—but also higher potential returns.