Risk-adjusted measures of return are important for both investors and traders. In this TradeStation Labs Analysis Concepts paper, we have taken a common risk-adjusted performance measure and applied it to individual securities to get a better idea of whether the equity security is compensating sufficiently for the amount of risk it has. The risk in this case is defined as beta. Jensen’s alpha helps us determine which sectors or global markets are currently outperforming. At the same time, you can apply it to individual stocks. The indicator also provides you with the expected return of the security based on CAPM.
Depending on the characteristics of the underlying security, the Jensen’s alpha indicator can be used as a basis for a trading strategy. If the security has trending behaviors, positive alpha would generate a bullish signal, whereas negative alpha would generate a bearish signal. For mean-reverting securities, the opposite would be true: positive alpha would generate a bearish signal, while negative alpha would generate a bullish signal. Regardless of the price behavior of the underlying security, it is important to keep track of which equity securities are currently outperforming on a risk-adjusted basis.