Financial Analysis: A Resource Guide 

Financial analysis involves looking at a company's profitability, solvency, liquidity, and stability.  In order to do this, one must look at the company's past performance, its anticipated future performance, and its comparative performance with competitors.  What you will find in this guide are suggestions and links to guide you in gathering all these elements that are necessary in making a well reasoned analysis of the company's standing.

The search for BETA: on the Web Pages tab, you will find several links that provide Betas for stocks of interest. However, if you cannot find a Beta, the following expalnation, provided by Jennifer Boettcher, MLS and MBA Co-Author of "Industry Research Using the Economic Census," may prove helpful to you:
You can calculate the beta coefficient that best works for your company. A beta is a measurement of volatility of your return on asset (stock price) compared to the return on an index (S&P, Value Line, self-created portfolio).

According to Wikipedia -- "To estimate Beta, one needs a list of returns for the asset and returns for the index; these returns can be daily, weekly or any period. Next, a plot should be made, with the index returns on the x-axis and the asset returns on the y-axis, in order to check that there are no serious violations of the linear regression model assumptions. The slope of the fitted line from the linear least-squares calculation is the estimated Beta. The y-intercept is the alpha ."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_coefficient

For a graphic depiction of this concept, please view:  http://www.statistics-help-online.com/node76.html