Any alternative to beta?

So I have a very fundamental question on Beta. It seems that beta has it's flaws: backward looking, doesn't distinguish between upside and downside and have liquidity bias as well. Beta is a measure to capture market risk but do we only have beta to capture market risk ? What other alternatives do we have to beta? It seems to me that beta is a pure statistical tool that measures the movement of stock to market, doesn't really have a qualitative reasoning behind it (I could be wrong).

Thank you in advance.

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Best Response

What are you using beta for? For DCF sometimes people will adjust with a size premium to address liquidity issues, etc. Other than using beta (which I would argue is best for any large liquid company) theres some papers on using company issued debt (i.e. 10yish YTW/M) + systemic risk.

In regards to backward looking, the latter discussed would be the most up to date (market). For companies not in early growth stage that have been around for a while with stable cap structure/business, nothing really wrong with beta.

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I am doing a project on beta as an undergrad. Essentially, i want to find if there is any other metric that can replace beta. Beta is not perfect, but it is the most widely used because it is the most effective. But are there other metrics that can capture systemic risk (may be a worse metric than beta)?

 

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