저자: Invest Avenue · 외국인
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Hello Howard. Hello Emma. So it's become fashionable to associate volatility with risk. In fact, the two words have almost become interchangeable. Investors think volatility is risk. But but you don't think that's the case. Is it what what's risk by your assumption? Risk is the probability of losing money.
I mean that's the main risk. There are other risks. The is there's the risk of falling short of your goals or your needs. There's the risk of uh being forced to sell at the on a downward fluctuation. uh and that interestingly is related to volatility but re volatility is not risk uh risk is the chance of losing money
and I think because people have this idea about volatility and risk they think that passives by investing purely in passives totally negates risk because of course then you just have the benchmark and no standard deviation away from that whereas actually investing in any type of structure does have risk
that's right um you know investors get sloppy and uh don't look deeply into the meaning of things. Uh people say, "I'm going to invest in an index fund and and and get rid of the risk." Well, the risk they get rid of is the risk of underperforming. Of course, to the price of giving up the risk, the risk of underperforming is giving up the risk of overperforming.
But let's say that's that's fine. they still retain significant risk because every time if if if if a if an index fund is guaranteed to emulate the market then every time the market goes down the index fund investor will lose money. Now maybe the rest will lose money too but at least they're trying not to.
And you say about risk is people become very riskaware when the market goes kaput but actually we should be thinking about risk constantly. We should think about it all the time and we should think about it more when the market's doing well. When the market goes kaput, to use your uh uh uh technical terminology, uh uh and prices go low, the market actually becomes safer.
Uh, of course, nobody thinks it's safer. Nobody acts like it's safer. People tend most people tend not to rush in at the bottom. That's why we have bottoms, but it's safer because prices are lower. Uh and uh uh but I I think that you should think about risk all the time. You should a portfolio should incorporate risk control all the time because risk is the potential for loss.
Loss is what happens when risk collides with a bad environment and we never know when that's going to happen. And you have quite a nice analogy about car insurance and risk. Well, that's right. uh you know or uh or or or home insurance. Everybody has a home. Everybody has insurance on their home against fire and nobody curses themselves at the end of the year that they had fire insurance and the house didn't burn down.
It is part of prudence. Similarly, investing should incorporate risk control all the time. It's an essential part of prudence. And to call up another analogy that you've just given at the Morning Star European conference, you say that um it's not actually the components of the market that are risky.
It's the people who are interacting with that market. The the the risk is not in the in the stock certificate. It's not in the exchange. It it's not in the company fully. I mean, most companies are much steadier than their stocks are. The risk is in the behavior of the investors. And if investors are behaving prudently, that's good.
If investors are panicked and dumping their securities, then as I said, then the market becomes safer. And if investors are buoyant and overconfident, then that's dangerous. And we should recognize that. Warren Buffett says the the less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we must conduct our own affairs.
And if we can all do it like Buffett, then we're doing it right. That's right, Howard. Thank you very much. Pleasure, Emma. This is Emma Wool for Morning Star.
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