Understanding Investment with Return to Risk Ratio

The market may not be going in the direction you wish all the time. When that happens, we lose money. And we represent the amount of money you may lose with a letter R. We know that this is the largest amount you may lose if the investment turned bad. When we talk about risk, we also consider the potential return in an investment. We estimate the relationship between the two with a ratio in R. In fact, you might already know and actually be using such a method in other aspects of your life, you just need to be conscious of it and apply it to your assets management.

We are constantly making choices in our lives. From little decisions of choosing which restaurant to eat to biggest decisions like choosing who to marry, you have already developed a set of skills to make up your mind. An example is the way to get home. There is a high way or you can take the street. If you go with the high way and if you are lucky, you may be able to arrive home within 30 minutes. But the possibility exists that there is a traffic accident on the road and the traffic jam may trap you for 2 more hours. The alternative is to take the street full of traffic lights. There are fewer cars and you would need 45 minutes despite the traffic.

The way you choose which way to go is the estimate the advantage of arriving home 15 minutes earlier and the hassle of potential traffic jam. This decision making process can be applied to investment management totally. We assess an investment opportunity with the return to risk ratio and see whether it worth noticing.

The best investors use this return to risk ratio to assess their investment opportunities. A seasoned professional investor would always start an investment consideration with the possible amount of money he could lose in a particular investment. And we denote the amount by R. Let say the expected return is 3 times of the risk you bear, we say this is a 3R opportunity. Whether we are talking about stock, mutual fund, property or any other investment vehicle, we use this same system to categorize them. The assets are just the tools. What we concern is the money. So a 2R in stock market is in substance the same as a 2R in the property market. They all mean an opportunity to earn twice the amount of money you may lose. The below example would make it clear.

Let’s say you predict that the property market is going up and you spot a fine house to capture the chance. You decided to buy it and sell it quickly to make a quick cash profit. For example, the price of the house is $80,000 and you have to pay $5000 to buy the house. The worst case is you lose the whole amount you pay, the $5,000. Therefore the amount $5000 is R. You plan to sell the house with $100,000. That implies a profit of $20,000. The profit is 4 times the amount you risked. So, we call this a 4R opportunity.

Perhaps your prediction was too optimistic and the best price you could get someone to buy is $90,000. The profit becomes $10,000 and it becomes a 2R investment because the amount you earn is 2 times the amount you risked.

Every successful story gives us insights on how to succeed. We see rich man on magazines speaking how successful and how wealthy they are and that they sounded like they have the secret short cut to making money in 2 weeks. But yet only the most generous persons would openly share the real steps and philosophy which help them become the men they are today. We would gain a lot of benefit by learning from them.

If you read biographies of famous people, including singers, businessmen, sportsmen, you would find that they all spent a lot of effort training themselves with the fundamental skills of whatever they do. For investments in anything, from enterprises to collectible stamps, there are also great basic techniques which are essential for any investor to be really profitable in the long run. These basics are the core of a workable and safe investment strategy.

The true fundamental principles are extremely important for beginners as well as experienced investors alike. For old investors, no matter how much experience you have got in investing. If you do not master the fundamentals, there is still room for you to grow by studying them. And for beginners, it is great for you to start with a solid foundation. You should spend the time and effort these rules deserve and review yourself constantly to ensure that you’re moving in line with them.

To start, instead of focusing on profits which everyone ultimately concerns, we must talk about good defense. You must be able to protect your asset before you can graduate to learning earning skills. First, you should understand the meaning of risk and how it affects your long term profits. No one would predict the stock market to go up all the time. Therefore, you must know what to do when it goes down.

Before you put money into any kind of investments, you should first construct a fallback strategy. If you do not decide the maximum loss you can bear, you would end up losing the whole thing. The point to quit before you losing too much is called the cut loss point. When the market goes in the opposite direction to your desire, know when you should leave and stop the loss.

When you spot a sound investment opportunity, before rushing into it you must decide your cut loss point. We have the privilege to work with many brilliant investors. What we observed is that, every successful investor who wins in the long term decides a safe cut loss point before they enter into any investment transactions. When you talk about profit with them, they would immediately check out the risk first. A good reference is the return to risk ratio, if it is not good enough, the chance is not a chance no matter how large the potential return is.

An average investor we see every day in bank branches are not like that. They do the opposite. They are easily persuaded to believe in certain kind of make money opportunity. They missed the potential risk factor and have not even heard of the return to risk ratio.

Refer to any kind of investment opportunities around you. All of them only focus on how attractive the profits are. Some good ones may have little text on the bottom talking a little bit about risk. Therefore, to become a winner in the long run, the first change you should adapt to is to think about risk rather than staring at the largest amount you could get. Remember, you must be willing to protect your own assets with any cost.