DerivaQuote

Risk and Uncertainty

You sure can't make money if you don't take risks.

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

George S. Patton, 1944

October, this is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are: July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.

Mark Twain

He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

Samuel Johnson
The Idler

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

Herodotus
The Histories of Herodotus

The Minimum of Risk with the maximum of profit is my motto.

Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim

He that will not set sail till all dangers are over must never put out to sea.

Thomas Fuller
Gnomologia, 1732, no. 2353

The key to success in the risk/return game is not to minimize or maximize risk but to manage it.

Mark A. Johnson
The Random Walk and Beyond, 1988, Ch. 7

Unless you enter the tiger's den, you cannot take the cubs.

Japanese proverb

The biggest risk you have is someone screwing up the reputation of the company.

William C. Jennings, partner
Coopers and Lybrand
Business Week, October 31, 1994, p. 88

If we blow ourselves up, who cares. We have not bet the ranch.

Zachary Snow, managing director
Salomon Brothers
Futures, November, 1994, p. 12

Risk is not always apparent but its invisibility is no longer an excuse for ignoring it.

Bankers Trust
"RAROC and Risk Management," 1995, p. 4

To put it simply and directly, if the bosses do not or cannot understand both the risks and rewards in their products, their firm should not be in the business.

William J. McDonough, President
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
"A Regulatory Perspective on Derivatives"
Global Derivatives: Public Sector Responses
Group of 30 Occasional Paper No. 44
1993, pp. 11-19

There are no fundamentally new or different risks in derivative products, rather ... familiar kinds of risks are presented and combined in novel ways.

Brian Quinn, director
Bank of England
"Derivatives: Report of an Internal Working Group"
April, 1993

There may be just one thing riskier than too much risk. Too little.

Joseph Erickson, KPMG Financial Services
advertisement in Financial Risk Management Supplement
Risk
, July, 1996, p. 10

The large hit you take next will not resemble the one you took last.

Nassim Taleb
Derivatives Strategy, April, 1997, p. 25

The law of the conservation of risk is like the conservation of misery. You can only pass it around, you cannot get rid of it.

Tanya Styblo Beder, Principal, Capital Market Risk Advisors
Risk, February, 1999, p. 23.

Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.

Tim McMahon
Money Talks
Rosalie Maggio, 1998, p. 96

Options carry a particularly high degree of risk. Investing in this area without a good understanding of how options work is like running through a dynamite factory with a burning match - you may live but you're still an idiot.

Joel Greenblatt
Money Talks
Rosalie Maggio, 1998, p. 69

In the current risk management world, the hunt for risk takes three general forms. One is the hunt for treasure - combing through markets for the next stellar investment management opportunity. Second is the hunt for hazard - identifying unwanted risks in asset and liability portfolios through techniques such as simulation, stress-testing, and backtesting. Third is the hunt for knowledge - forensic investigation of unexpected gains and losses.

Tanya Styblo Beder
"The Great Risk Hunt"
The Journal of Portfolio Management
Special Issue, May, 1999, p. 29.

Risk can't be tamed. You have to work with it. That's why this is an interesting job.

Brian Lo
Paribas
AsiaRisk
August, 1999, p. 26

There is no doubt that being in business is all about taking risk.

Richard Shrieve
Bank of America, Hong Kong
AsiaRisk
December, 1999, p. 5

If a random bolt of lightning hits you when you're standing in the middle of the field, that feels like a random event. But if your business is to stand in random fields during lightning storms, then you should anticipate, perhaps a little more robustly, the risks you're taking.

Peter Fisher
Trillion Dollar Bet
NOVA, PBS, February 8, 2000

When I first saw the formula I knew enough about it to know that this is the answer.  This solved the ancient problem of risk and return in the stock market.  It was recognized by the profession for what it was as a real tour de force.

Merton Miller
Trillion Dollar Bet
NOVA, PBS, February 8, 2000

. . . the anticipation of what might happen is almost as important as what actually happens.

Bob Costas
Fair Ball
2000

There is nothing wrong with having a risk-taking culture, provided your clients are aware of these risks and are happy to put up the capital to support them.


Anonymous hedge fund manager
Risk, October, 2000, p. 35

A lot of people approach risk as if it's the enemy when it's really fortune's accomplice.

Sting
quoted in A Man's Journey to Simple Abundance
Sarah Ban Breathnach & Michael Segell
Scribner (2000)

Risk should not be hunted down and exterminated. Instead, an investor should take risks he or she can afford at the right price.

Tanya Styblo Beder
Financial Engineering News
May/June 2003, p. 1

 

Markets are an evolving ecology.  New risks arise all the time.

Andrew Lo
CFA Magazine
March/April 2004, p. 31

We view risk as an asset.
 

Noel Donohoe
Goldman Sachs
Risk, July 2004, p. 42

 

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.

William James
The Will to Believe, 1897

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered with failures, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt
Speech before the Hamilton Club, Chicago, April 10, 1899

 

Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.  We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know.  But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld, U. S. Secretary of Defense
February, 2002

I think we should follow a simple rule.  If we can take the worst, take the risk.

Dr. Joyce Brothers
http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/authors/dr__joyce_brothers_quotes.html

 

Thank for a minute about those people who've had the greatest influence and impact on history.  Consider their actions.  Their character traits.  Most of what made them special involved risks.  Creativity requires risk.  So does exploration and innovation.  Anyone who thinks outside the box is taking a risk.  Leadership brings many risks.  Courage is exercised in the face of risk.  Investments involve risk.  Decision-making always means a certain degree of risk.

Ben Carson
Take the Risk:  Learning to Identify, Choose, and Live with Acceptable Risk
2009, p. 120

My dad was a risk taker.  Both my parents encouraged taking risks.  So I think they instilled in me the courage to try things.

Tom Selleck
FoxNews.com
April 3, 2015

I learned to admire risk takers and entrepreneurs, be they farmers or small merchants, who went to work and took risks to build something for themselves and their children, pushing at the boundaries of their lives to make them better.
 

Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan:  An American Life
Gallery Books, 1999

"The one thing we all hate in life is uncertainty."

Draymond Green
Forward, Golden State Warriors
Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2016
Article by Ben Cohen



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Last updated: April 27, 2016