The art and science of risk in investment

SOME people have an appetite for risk. Plenty of thrill seekers jump on to off-road motorbikes and ATVs, or hurtle down black diamond runs on a snowboard, and reap the adrenaline-based rewards.

With the meteoric rise of online trading apps, we are now seeing many amateur investors flying down metaphorical black diamond runs to ride the stock markets aggressively.

I have done both in my younger days; snowboarding was a true passion of mine, and so was speculative trading. While I still love snowboarding and hope to get back on some of the more challenging slopes again in the future, I have built a very different view when it comes to speculative trading.