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Reduce Risk by Seeming Risky

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Submitted By axyonov
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Risk is a four-letter word. Manage risk well and you can make a fortune. Manage risk poorly and you could lose a colossal fortune.

A few daredevils like risk and cannot live without it. They careen from risk to risk. Ask Eike Battista, one of Brazil’s most dynamic entrepreneurs. Battista managed to build one of the world’s great fortunes, and then lost most of it. He knew when to take risks. But he obviously did not reduce them. Most do not like risk since they see the loss more clearly than they see the gain.

My father was an actuary (an insurance expert who specializes in risk), and one of my first lessons about money was that risk is not inherently good or bad – you just have to manage it or you will pay the price. If you are asked to assume risk, the one doing the asking needs to pay you. And you should be sure that you are not wiped out by the event happening – unless, of course, you cannot live without such excitement.

Big money has always been concerned with risk. Here are some ways big money likes to manage risk:

Financiers invest in portfolios. As passive investors, they do not always control the direction of the investment so they hedge their bets through diversification. You diversify because you do not know how any one investment will perform.
Insurance companies manage risk by using actuarial tables to understand the probability of both gain and loss. Then they charge a premium that pays them to assume the risk and gives them a profit. Warren Buffett just signed a $1 billion insurance policy – guaranteeing against a lottery ticket that predicts every winner on the NCAA basketball playoffs. So you can bet on anything – just know the odds of success and failure.
VCs manage risk by investing:
Mainly in Silicon Valley (because that’s where the home runs have been)
Mainly in later stages after the major risk has been reduced
By controlling

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