Volatility of a stock

Iman asked a question that I thought merits its own post.

Q.  Is there anything that would essentially calculate the VIX for an individual stock that is easily obtainable?

A.  The VIX is really the volatility for the "S&P 500" index.  The volatility of a stock is measured by the Beta of a stock.  If you go to finance.yahoo.com, put in the ticker symbol (E.g. CMG) and then look at the key statistics, you will see the stock beta on the right side (1.06 for CMG).  If you look at ISRG, its beta is 1.84.  So ISRG is more volatile than CMG in relation to market moves.  The beta gives you an indication of the volatility of the stock in relation to the market and generally the options for high beta stocks will be more expensive than low beta stocks.  A beta of a 1.8 signifies that ISRG is 1.8 times more volatile than the general market.  A beta of 1 means that the stock is no more volatile than the general market.