Risk Control

  

Categories: Managed Funds

If we see sweetbread on a restaurant menu and order it without doing any research, thinking we just ordered some kind of yummy dessert item, we’re going to be in for a big shock when someone plops a plate of lamb pancreas down in front of us.

“Sweetbread” is one of those words that just doesn’t mean what it sounds like it should mean. But that’s not the case with the term “risk control,” which is exactly what it sounds like. “Risk control” is the method an organization uses to control its risk. Mind = blown, right?

Now...what risk control specifically looks like is going to vary from one company to the next, so let’s just talk about what they all tend to have in common. Companies usually try to figure out where they’re vulnerable by conducting risk assessments. Once they find a potential weakness—maybe their data protection software is out of date, or maybe they have a subsidiary in the middle of a potentially bankrupting lawsuit—they can devise strategies to address those risks. For the most part, a company’s risk control measures are going to do three things: 1) analyze the likelihood and potential impact of the risk, 2) put processes in place to either prevent the risk or reduce its effects, and 3) conduct in-depth analyses of risks that do materialize, so they can figure out how and why they happened.

What might those processes look like? They might look like more stringent accounting principles, or increased safety training requirements. They might look like a diversification of resources and assets, so that one risk event doesn’t take the company under. They might involve hiring an in-house legal staff, copyrighting and patenting proprietary information, or setting up backup servers for our backup servers. If we own a restaurant, they might even involve putting a disclaimer on our menu so we don’t get sued the next time someone orders sweetbread expecting chocolate cake.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is market risk?5 Views

00:00

Finance Allah shmoop what is market risk All right There

00:08

are a lot of risks when you invest money Two

00:10

of the most common categories are unsystematic risk And yes

00:13

of course systematic risk Also known as market risk Well

00:17

unsystematic risk refers to risks linked to a specific stock

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or security So you buy shares in your dad's publicly

00:24

traded ice cream company and the company goes bankrupt Who

00:27

knew pork rind ice cream would prove so unpopular Who

00:30

knew well that's unsystematic risk You made a bad investment

00:34

and you paid for it by losing everything you invested

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un systematically Well that's individual stock risk or in systematic

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risk AII bad brain bad return What not all investments

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do well In fact many of them do poorly even

00:47

for the best of investors So most professionals diversify their

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eggs such that not all of them are invested in

00:53

one stock or one basket So that revolves around unsystematic

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risk That is risk You can actually do something about

01:00

and improve your odds of being successful like by being

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a good smart investor But then there's market risk which

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just exists as a natural part of the risk world

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For illustrative purposes You could choose to not take any

01:13

road risk Like when you drive on the roads Your

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odds of being hit by some idiot texting his girlfriend

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and not looking at the double yellow line are not

01:21

one in a good Gillian right You also have a

01:23

risk of a tire blowout or a tree falling on

01:26

you or skidding into a mailbox on that hill with

01:28

the gravel in the oil slick from the construction people

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right Those are all quote market risks unquote of driving

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So why do it Why drive Why not just stay

01:38

home Never leave the house get Amazon and door dash

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and ups to take care of all of your needs

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and never suffer the market risk of dying on the

01:46

road Well for some people this probably is a good

01:49

idea Well the same allegory lives in the stock market

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When you invest in stocks odds are extremely high that

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at some period while their value will go down maybe

01:58

a lot You can't head yourself against things like terrorist

02:01

attacks and natural disasters political upheaval and zombie apocalypses or

02:06

apocalypse side They say The zombie There's no real way

02:09

to protect yourself against market risk It's just systematic It's

02:13

part of the system Got it So there's no way

02:15

to deal with market risk other than for one thing

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time Historically the stock market goes up over time Check

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out this glorious chart running for one hundred years in

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change for what the market is done without even calculating

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the additional return from dividends distributed along the way Well

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you can see that there has rarely been an extended

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period of time when the market didn't go up and

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or at least distribute enough in dividends Such that in

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each decade while there's been a nicely positive return from

02:42

being invested in the stock market could this suddenly change

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and go the other direction such that we have half

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a century of no growth Sure but that would be

02:51

a big departure from the way our driving has gone

02:53

in the past on the roads But you never know

02:56

There's always the N plus one idiot out there texting

02:59

and driving and you know really not giving a

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