JIMMY MOYAHA: Paul Nixon, head of behavioural finance at Momentum Investments, has the view that risk is good. We know that we’ve been in a very weird kind of risk environment with risk-on risk-off approaches not really making sense and being controlled in large part by the central banks. But Paul, thanks so much for your time this morning. What risk is good risk?
If we don’t have it and we’re forced to dip into a market-linked investment to cover an emergency, that could be a big problem. Then this is the risk that we need to take. PAUL NIXON: Not necessarily. If you go to financial market theory, I think what investors often forget [is that] taking more risk does not equal more reward; it equals the opportunity for more reward, which means that there are going to be variable outcomes.
We’ve got to remember that part of financial physics is that taking risk does not guarantee us return. PAUL NIXON: I think the discussion we’ve had now and the four components we’ve talked about already allude to the fact that, hang on a second, this is actually not that easy. So there are four factors that need to be balanced. It doesn’t help if you’re going to have a very short time horizon.
I think that’s where a lot of investors fall short as well. They sort of go straight into investing in markets without these kind of basic building blocks in place, and without the right help to make sure that they understand these building blocks and that they can actually sort of weather the investment journey.