Until now, we've focused on risk measurements that you can find on most Web sites or in print publications. In this lesson, we'll discuss some only-from-Morningstar yardsticks you can use to get a handle on a fund's risk.

Why does Morningstar offer its own risk statistics when standard deviation and beta already exist as reliable statistics? Those figures give you an idea of how risky a fund is on an absolute level and as compared with an index. But as we pointed out in our last session, no single risk measurement can give you a full idea of a fund's volatility. If you approach risk from various angles—as Morningstar's measures do—you can get a much better picture of how a fund should behave. You can find all of these measures in a Morningstar fund report.