In my days of innocence, I went on a business call with a female colleague to a shop in Shoprite Lagos.
Bored, I did some window shopping, I saw these ladies shoes, all with just the left pair, I picked it up, there was "323" written on a sticker on sole.
I reasoned "was it N32, 300.00? Or left shoe alone
Curious, i asked the shop attention? "How much are these shoes? They look too nice for N32k"
The shop owner looked over at me, in my nice suit and said, "its actually N323,000 a pair"
Three Hundred and Twenty Three Thousand!!
Wait what?
N323,000 how?
My perplexed expression was so innocent, so she explained.
"They are Louboutins..see the red soles.."
I was still not inhaling properly, back then i think Nestlé stock was like N500 a share, I was calculating...
Well what is risk? Risk is the chance you may not achieve your investment objective, in financial lingo its called Volatility of returns .
So "risky" means more volatility of returns, lower risk means lower volatility of returns, higher risk means higher volatility of returns. So higher risk translates to a greater propensity for higher returns NOT a guarantee of higher returns.
Similarly lower risk translates to a lower propensity for volatility NOT a guarantee of zero volatility.