Lower Your Risk
If 100% of your portfolio was invested in the S&P 500 you would have expected to experience a loss greater than -7.8% (two standard deviations below the mean) in one month 12 times (2.3% times 541 months) over the last 45 plus years or about once every 4 years. Individual companies and some other assets have even higher volatility than the S&P 500. Depending on your risk tolerance this type of risk may be too high. Risk can be lowered through the selection of lower volatil