Finding Beta This assignment will teach you how to find a firm's beta. You will compile historical data for a single stock as well data for the market and compare their movements. The data we will use will come from the US Market. Choose a stock of your choice, download MONTHLY data for the past 5 years and also do the same with the market index. Read the instructions below to construct your data set. Downloading the Data Step 1. Log on to finance.yahoo.com Step 2. In the search bar at the top, type in a stocks name. For example, type in General Motors and click search. Step 3. Now that you reached the stock's page with the price and relevant news, click on Historical Prices (you can find it over the chart). Step 4. Set your date range to 5 years from today. Click on MONTHLY data. Click on Get Prices. Step 5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Download to Excel. (If you can't download, then copy paste the data into Excel.) Step 6. Return to the main page (finance.yahoo.com) Step 7. Search for S\&P 500 index. Click on ^GSPC to choose the index. Step 8. Repeat steps 3.5 for to download the market data. Excel Step 9. Open both files in Excel. Step 10. Copy the market data and place it in the same sheet as the stock data. MAKE SURE IHE DATES MATCH UP EXACTLY. For stock and market prices, use the Adj Close price. You should set it up similar to the table shown below. Calculating Returns in Excel Step 11. In a new column, find the monthly returns for the stock and the market data. Recall returns equation is %Return=Returnt(Returnt+1Returnt)100 Step 12. Using a scatter plot function, plot the returns of the stock against the return of the market. You should get something similar to the figure below. Make sure the market returns. are on the x-axis and stock returns on the y-axis. Step 13. Right Click on the data points in graph, and click on "Add Trendline" to find the equation of the line. Make sure you also click on "Display equation on chart" to see the equation of the line. Step 14. Find the stock's beta from the equation of the line