Common sense about risk

Risk versus returns. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The idea that the more returns you want, the more risk you must take is ingrained deeply into the way we think about investing. This is not just a concept or general rule of thumb anymore. There's even a Nobel Prize that has been given out for work from which this risk-return concept can be mathematically derived. Before someone gives you any investment advice, they are supposed to figure out your 'risk tolerance'. In fact, in India as well as in most well-regulated parts of the world, this is a mandatory part of being a registered financial advisor. However, there is something fundamentally unsound about this idea. Not the idea of judging an investor's risk tolerance, but the concept of a person having a single toler