Quotes & Sayings About Risk Aversion

Below, we itemize some of the quite different lessons investors seem to have learned as of late 2009 - false lessons, we believe. To not only learn but also effectively implement investment lessons requires a disciplined, often contrary, and long-term-oriented investment approach. It requires a resolute focus on risk aversion rather than maximizing immediate returns, as well as an understanding of history, a sense of financial market cycles, and, at times, extraordinary patience. — Seth Klarman

I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years - part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion. — Peter Thiel

In government, the forces of risk-aversion and constant conflict serve to stultify and narrow the range of ideas up for debate. — Paul Singer

While it might seem that anyone can be a value investor, the essential characteristics of this type of investor-patience, discipline, and risk aversion-may well be genetically determined. — Seth Klarman

Human individuals and human organizations typically have preferences over resources that are not well represented by an "unbounded aggregative utility function". A human will typically not wager all her capital for a fifty-fifty chance of doubling it. A state will typically not risk losing all its territory for a ten percent chance of a tenfold expansion. [T]he same need not hold for AIs. An AI might therefore be more likely to pursue a risky course of action that has some chance of giving it control of the world. — Nick Bostrom

Value investing is risk aversion. — Seth Klarman

I view risk-aversion as crippling America in many ways. — Peter Diamandis

Now, it has been independently shown that people hate to lose something more than they enjoy gaining it. For example, they don't mind paying for something with a credit card even when told there is a discount for cash, but they hate paying the same amount if they are told there is a surcharge for using credit. As a result, people will often refuse to gamble for an expected profit (they turn down bets such as "Heads, you win $120; tails, you pay $100), but they will gamble to avoid an expected loss (such as "Heads, you no longer owe $120; tails, you now owe an additional $100"). (This kind of behavior drives economists crazy, but is avidly studied by investment firms hoping to turn it to their advantage.) The combination of people's loss aversion with the effects of framing explains the paradoxical result: the "gain" metaphor made the doctors risk-averse; the "loss" metaphor made them gamblers. — Steven Pinker

Study skills really aren't the point. Learning is about one's relationship with oneself and one's ability to exert the effort, self-control, and critical self-assessment necessary to achieve the best possible results--and about overcoming risk aversion, failure, distractions, and sheer laziness in pursuit of REAL achievement. This is self-regulated learning. — Linda B. Nilson

NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation. — Burt Rutan

Those whom even love cannot shake from their habitual aversion to risk and inertia are those who are truly unredeemable. — Cristina Nehring

Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders ... It is a species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals. — Francois Fenelon

When you have risk aversion in Japan, the normal day-to-day outflows that happen in a normal market environment slow down. — Jens Nordvig

In contrast to the speculators preoccupation with rapid gain, value investors demonstrate their risk aversion by striving to avoid loss. — Seth Klarman

If we can embrace the adventure and risk and equip our churches to lay down their lives and abandon their inherent loss-aversion, who knows what innovation, what freshness, what new insights from the Spirit will emerge. — Alan Hirsch

So my message is in whichever realm, be it going into space or going into the deep sea, you have to balance the yin and yang of caution and boldness, risk aversion and risk taking, fear and fearlessness. No great accomplishment takes place, whether it be a movie or a deep ocean expedition, or a space mission, without a kind of dynamic equipoise between the two. Luck is not a factor. Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option. — James Cameron

If we could be freed from our aversion to loss, our whole outlook on risk would change. — Alan Hirsch

There is an understandable aversion to risk, and a reluctance to plan too far ahead: the modern electorate wants instant gratification and simplistic, populist solutions. — Mungo MacCallum

Even when a man and a woman perform equally well in a task - say, solving math problems - men are more willing to enter competitions based on that task. Men also show less risk aversion. — Sendhil Mullainathan

Most people have an aversion to risk, my college economics professor told me. Which means they have to be rewarded to take on that risk. The higher the risk, the higher the possible payout has to be for people to jump. — Michael Arrington

Combating myopic risk aversion is the most difficult emotional task facing any investor. I know of only two ways of doing this. The first is to check on your portfolios as infrequently as possible. ... The other way to avoid myopic risk aversion is to hold enough cash so that you have a certain equanimity about market falls. — William J. Bernstein