Risk Aversion

  

Categories: Managed Funds

A bias that leads to people taking the “sure path” over the “risky-yet-can-pay-off-big-time path.”

The reason? Risk can certainly pay off, but it might not. Playing it safe, however, can avoid the nasty things that no one likes, including stares of contempt from a spouse. Risk aversion causes us to stay in a job that we hate, rather than attempting to start a business where we’re the boss. The business may eventually pay off with fame and fortune, but it may not. The job we hate will at least provide a paycheck and keep the evil bill collectors off our backs.

Risk aversion has a flip side, like the Force. People tend to take increased risks to prevent loss.

Does this sound familiar? It somewhat becomes an escalation of commitment. It’s also indicative of people who need Gambler’s Anonymous. For example, a person who takes $500 to the casino and loses it all...may not want to go home empty-handed and tell the family that they can’t afford to go on vacation during Spring Break. As a result, he goes to the ATM, and takes out another $500 and plays with that…and loses, blowing next year’s Spring Break, too. Now he gets to go home and explain that the next two Spring Breaks will be spent watching reruns on Netflix, because he couldn’t stop gambling.

Point to remember: risk aversion can either be a fear of trying something that might seem crazy for a nice reward...or doing something crazy to avoid loss.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is market risk?5 Views

00:00

Finance Allah shmoop what is market risk All right There

00:08

are a lot of risks when you invest money Two

00:10

of the most common categories are unsystematic risk And yes

00:13

of course systematic risk Also known as market risk Well

00:17

unsystematic risk refers to risks linked to a specific stock

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or security So you buy shares in your dad's publicly

00:24

traded ice cream company and the company goes bankrupt Who

00:27

knew pork rind ice cream would prove so unpopular Who

00:30

knew well that's unsystematic risk You made a bad investment

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and you paid for it by losing everything you invested

00:38

un systematically Well that's individual stock risk or in systematic

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risk AII bad brain bad return What not all investments

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do well In fact many of them do poorly even

00:47

for the best of investors So most professionals diversify their

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eggs such that not all of them are invested in

00:53

one stock or one basket So that revolves around unsystematic

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risk That is risk You can actually do something about

01:00

and improve your odds of being successful like by being

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a good smart investor But then there's market risk which

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just exists as a natural part of the risk world

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For illustrative purposes You could choose to not take any

01:13

road risk Like when you drive on the roads Your

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odds of being hit by some idiot texting his girlfriend

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and not looking at the double yellow line are not

01:21

one in a good Gillian right You also have a

01:23

risk of a tire blowout or a tree falling on

01:26

you or skidding into a mailbox on that hill with

01:28

the gravel in the oil slick from the construction people

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right Those are all quote market risks unquote of driving

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So why do it Why drive Why not just stay

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home Never leave the house get Amazon and door dash

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and ups to take care of all of your needs

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and never suffer the market risk of dying on the

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road Well for some people this probably is a good

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idea Well the same allegory lives in the stock market

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When you invest in stocks odds are extremely high that

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at some period while their value will go down maybe

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a lot You can't head yourself against things like terrorist

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attacks and natural disasters political upheaval and zombie apocalypses or

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apocalypse side They say The zombie There's no real way

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to protect yourself against market risk It's just systematic It's

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part of the system Got it So there's no way

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to deal with market risk other than for one thing

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time Historically the stock market goes up over time Check

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out this glorious chart running for one hundred years in

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change for what the market is done without even calculating

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the additional return from dividends distributed along the way Well

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you can see that there has rarely been an extended

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period of time when the market didn't go up and

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or at least distribute enough in dividends Such that in

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each decade while there's been a nicely positive return from

02:42

being invested in the stock market could this suddenly change

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and go the other direction such that we have half

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a century of no growth Sure but that would be

02:51

a big departure from the way our driving has gone

02:53

in the past on the roads But you never know

02:56

There's always the N plus one idiot out there texting

02:59

and driving and you know really not giving a

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