Trading Psychology  |  OCT 2002

Evaluate Your Risk by Simon Vine

Evaluate Your Risk by Simone Vine To accurately determine risk, you must filter classical statistical factors. How, you ask? With a personal risk profile. In classical statistics, risk is defined as the standard deviation from the mean. To some extent, this basic concept governs the minds of most decisionmakers, including investors: A decision in a given situation carries a risk equal to the deviation from the average person’s decision. Of course, it is anybody’s guess as to what the average person’s decision might be, so you cannot be certain how far away you are from the average. Thus, there is incongruence between a generally acceptable conceptual framework and the real-life behavioral aspects of decision-making. If decision-makers forget that the concept of risk is always individual in nature, their decisions become riskier and less realistic.

by Simon Vine