OPEN A FINANCE textbook, and you’ll find discussions of volatility and beta, value-at-risk, the Sharpe ratio, the Sortino ratio, the Treynor ratio and many other quantitative tools for measuring risk. But what should you make of these metrics? Are they an effective way to control risk in your portfolio?
These tools do have decades of research behind them, and they can be useful. But I believe they’re also incomplete. Worse yet, they can be misleading. William Sharpe, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, once commented that his ratio was being “manipulated” by investment marketers “to misrepresent their performance.”
This highlights the first weakness of these quantitative measures: They’re formula-based and that gives them the appearance of being objective, but many of the inputs to these formulas are actually quite subjective. So subjective, in fact, that Sharpe has said, “I could think of a way to have an infinite Sharpe ratio.” To put that in context, a Sharpe value of more than two would be considered very attractive.
Another issue with quantitative measures is that risk is multidimensional. Consider the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank. None of the quantitative measures referenced above would have detected the risk that ultimately brought down the bank. That’s because, in the end, the bank’s undoing had more to do with psychology than numbers. Depositors began to worry about the bank’s solvency, and those worries caused others to worry. Author Morgan Housel compared it to a stampede: A concern which, at first, was reasonable began to take on a life of its own, driving people over the line into irrational behavior.
The message I take from this: Risk is a bit like a hydra, the creature from mythology that had multiple heads. It’s awfully hard to pin down and even harder to quantify. Sometimes, situations that didn’t appear to carry any risk will suddenly experience a flare up. Other times, existing risks will present themselves in new ways and with a greater level of ferocity.
That’s what we saw in 2020, when COVID-19 emerged. There had been other virus outbreaks in recent years, including other coronaviruses. For several years leading up to 2020, in fact, the State Department had specifically called out the risk of a pandemic.
Here’s what intelligence analysts wrote in 2019, a year before COVID hit: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
That was hardly the only warning. But if a pandemic had been on our radar, why were we so unprepared? That gets at another reality of different risks: It’s hard to know when to take them seriously. If a particular risk hasn’t been seen before—or hasn’t been seen in a long time—it’s difficult to know how to think about it. How do we distinguish between risks that are real and those that are just paranoid notions?
Indeed, those who dwell too much on prospective risks face a risk themselves: They’ll be dismissed as worrywarts. Investor Nouriel Roubini, for example, has earned the nickname Dr. Doom for his perpetually glass-half-empty outlook. He’s a serious economist, but many people roll their eyes when he delivers yet another downbeat forecast.
Investor William Bernstein, in his book Deep Risk, discusses “the four horsemen” of portfolio risk. In addition to inflation and deflation, which are common concerns, he includes devastation and confiscation—the sorts of things that would be associated with a breakdown of civil society. Are these real risks? I wouldn’t dismiss them—and I credit Bernstein for being brave enough to raise these questions—but it’s also difficult to know what reasonable steps you might take to protect yourself against them.
Risk is tricky also because it’s a master of disguise. Even when we have a good understanding of a particular risk—such as market bubbles—we can still be fooled. Not unlike viruses, market bubbles mutate. They always come back looking a little different each time. That allows them to slip through our defenses. That, in fact, is how I would characterize much of what happened in 2021, when all sorts of newfangled investments rose to prominence—SPACs, for example, and thousands of new crypto “currencies.”
Even today, despite cryptocurrencies’ volatile performance and lack of intrinsic value, I know many reasonable people who believe they’re valid investments. Are they wrong? I think so. But we won’t really know until we have the benefit of hindsight. And that’s the problem. Investment bubbles are indeed masters of disguise.
Given these challenges, what can you do to manage risk? Below are some suggestions.
For starters, don’t rely on any single measure of risk. In his book, Margin of Safety, hedge fund manager Seth Klarman wrote, “Risk simply cannot be described by a single number.” At the same time, though, I don’t view these quantitative risk measures as worthless. They each can help in their own way, but only as part of a mosaic.
In Against the Gods, the late Peter Bernstein addressed this topic. Share price volatility is a common yardstick for measuring risk, but it’s also been roundly criticized. Klarman put it plainly: “I find it preposterous that a single number could be thought to completely describe the risk in a security.” But Bernstein argues that volatility is a measure that’s good enough, even if it’s not perfect. “Statistical analysis confirms what intuition suggests: most of the time, an increase in volatility is associated with a decline in the price of an asset.” In other words, a risk measure doesn’t need to be perfect for it to be useful.
Next, use history to your advantage. Indeed, market downturns do carry a silver lining: They help us better understand the character of risk. What have we learned from the current cycle? In my view, it serves as a reminder that risks may recede but never go away entirely. Inflation, which had been dormant for 20 years, is a good example. For that reason, in making a financial plan, it’s important not to dismiss any particular risk because it hasn’t happened recently. Everything has some probability, even if it’s low.
What else can you do? Recognize that risk is personal. In fact, an event that might be bad for one person might be positive for someone else. For instance, if you’re in your working years and regularly adding to your savings, stock market downturns are actually positive events. I always tell younger investors that they should be hoping for a downturn because that’ll allow them to acquire shares at lower prices. Meanwhile, lower prices are the opposite of what retirees want to see.
Recognize also that some risks aren’t necessarily all good or all bad. Some market events are positive in some ways but negative in others. If you’re in retirement, for example, stock market downturns are generally negative. But suppose you’re looking to complete a Roth conversion or trying to move assets to the next generation in your family. In these cases, you’d benefit from a recession and lower asset prices.
Finally, try to maintain what I’ve called a “five minds” approach to investing. In evaluating risk, employ simultaneously the mindset of an optimist, a pessimist, an analyst, an economist and a psychologist. This balanced approach can help you navigate the landscape of risk.
Adam M. Grossman is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. Sign up for Adam’s Daily Ideas email, follow him on Twitter @AdamMGrossman and check out his earlier articles.
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I’m no fan of cryptocurrency, but the issue isn’t that it has no inherent value. The USD also has no inherent value, but rather like all currency its value is linked to its ability to store and settle debts. USD value and stability ultimately comes from the systems in place to regulate it.
Cryptocurrency is too erratic to store value and settle debts, but that’s because there is no mechanism performing regulation. This lack of stabilizing regulation can also occur in paper currency, as is evident with the Turkish lira. The president of Turkey has been using religious texts to fill government positions and dictate monetary policy, causing the lira to lose 80% of its value over the past 5 years.
Believing cryptocurrency has value because of its limited supply is equivalent to the mistake of believing dollars only had value when they were once backed by gold. In reality, the first currency equivalent (accepting written documentation for one’s goods and services, rather than demanding direct barter) came about in 3500BCE in the form of clay tablets, with debts inscribed directly onto them. Cryptocurrency Blockchain technology may be able to ensure that no one is able to rewrite the modern equivalent of those clay tablets, but without a stabilization and enforcement mechanism, few people would be willing to forgo direct barter in favor of the volatile nature of cryptocurrency.
I like your final example. In the downturn, my kids are continuing to invest in their future retirement during the recent downturn. But in my retirement, I dislike the impact of the recent downturn on my holdings. But I’m not losing sleep over it.
Great discussion of the word “risk” as it pertains to investing. Equating price volatility with risk is inaccurate. If stocks are acquired by regularly purchasing shares of a low-cost mutual fund based on a broad index over one’s working career, this dollar cost averaging and diversification will have mitigated most of the risk in owning stocks. The risk faced by this investor is the probability he or she might do something wrong, such as panicking and selling when shares are down. In other words, the risk was not in owning a “risky asset”, but rather it was the investor’s behavior. Logically, if that investor had a sufficient allocation to less volatile assets (short term treasuries and cash) to draw from in retirement during bear markets, the need to sell stocks during a downturn would be greatly reduced. One of Buffett’s memorable lines (and there are a lot of them) was when he was asked why so many people have not heeded his investment advice (which is what I described above), he responded “Most people do not want to get rich slowly”.
I’m happy to say I have never read an Economics text book, and I have no idea what a Sharpe ratio is supposed to tell me. (Please don’t explain.) Instead, I have decided on an asset allocation I think appropriate for my age (75) and have invested the stock allocation in low cost index funds that cover the entire market along with international coverage. I have yet to panic when the market goes down. I don’t think a breakdown of civil order is out of the question (all those guns…) but I am not planning on buying gold – other suggestions welcome.
Well, I hope your investments are in a Roth or Tax-deferred accounts. Why, because stupid mutual funds pay capital gains at the end of the year and YOU have to pay taxes on it to the IRS. Mutual funds are OK for 401ks or 403bs but not in taxable accounts. ETFs are more tax-efficient and save you on capital gains taxes. I know, I learned the hard way on one of my wife’s accounts.
I closed that account and told Morgan Stanley where they could go, in so many words. And they were collecting stupid high mutual fund fees on this account. I call those mutual fund fees “stealth fees” that most people ignore to their detriment. Stick to Fidelity for your accounts and low fee ETFs. And, Fidelity also has a great money market sweep fund as well and a great dashboard to follow your accounts.
Thanks, but I prefer Vanguard, where I have been since the 80s. And I don’t share the American obsession with reducing taxes to the absolute minimum if not beyond.
You could buy a little gold, a little silver coin, a little land, a little gun, and canned goods to round out your over-weight in the international financial system. After all, monies (and stocks) are just paper. They are just crypto that is backed by the State, so all of that is an act of faith. The account owners at Silicon Valley Bank were acting on that same faith, as am I. As are we all. But you could add a small amount of buffer by getting some tangible property to tide you over until real goods and services are restored after the apocalypse.
Nice post! However, I’m 75, and if the apocalypse actually occurs I hope I would be eliminated early on.
Here’s one. Learn to live off the land. (No, I have not done this myself.)
Unrelated to the collapse of civil order, I recommend the book Naked Economics. As the author notes in the preface, it has no graphs, charts or formulas – which is why I chose it when one day I decided to read an economics book. It just talks about how things work.
Thanks, definitely too old to learn to live off the land, lol. I would be more inclined to read a book on economics if the practitioners weren’t in such disagreement with each other – action A will lead to inflation, no deflation, no unemployment etc.. As a science it seems to be back in the sun goes round the earth/here there be dragons/alchemy days.
Good discussion. One interesting idea layered upon another. I like the notion that risk is educational, that it reminds us there is no free lunch and we must remain on guard.