Alpha. Beta. Gamma. Phi.
The letters could be the name of a college honor society or maybe a fraternity or sorority. But in finance, they represent the progression of thinking about investments and how to judge them. Phi is the newest one.
Alpha measures an investment’s performance against a market index. If the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up 10 percent and a mutual fund is up 15 percent, for example, that 5 percentage point difference is alpha.
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