When Conventional Wisdom Understates The Case
Diversifying your investments is classic advice. If anything, it is underpracticed. This might sound strange but don't worry we will take a closer look at what diversification really means in a future note. The point of this note is to make an even stronger claim than just "I recommend you diversify".
My claim is:
If you do not diversify you are incinerating wealth.
Why?
The reason is grounded in theory but better explained via logic. Let's imagine there is a universe of investments that are fairly priced. Nothing offers an unusually attractive prospect of reward compared to risk. Suddenly a new investment opportunity is presented to the world that appears to have especially favorable qualities (extra return, less risk, or low correlation with the market). Let's consider the scenarios:
- The potential return above average + low or average risk → Everyone will buy it. Price will rise until the expected return is driven lower
- Extremely high return potential but very high risk → Investors with large bankrolls who can tolerate the swings will bid up the price
- Risk reward commensurate with the market but less correlation → Investors who understand portfolio math will be willing to bid it up driving its expected return lower.
The principles underlying these scenarios, in order:
- The merit of any investment can be ruined if you pay too much.
- Risk is not an absolute concern. It's suitability depends on the bankroll.
- Uncorrelated investments dramatically dampen volatility at the portfolio level.
This leads to a powerful conclusion familiar to finance professionals:
You are not paid extra for taking diversifiable risks.
I've always found that statement difficult to internalize. Re-stating it:
Any standalone investment with favorable qualities will be bid to the point where it looks overpriced when viewed in isolation.
Diversification Is An Imperative
As we previously established markets are efficient, at least from most investors' vantage point. That means diversification is not just recommended, it actually represents an upperbound on what it the optimal risk reward when dealing with public¹ investments.
Taking unnecessary risk with a concentrated portfolio is not something you are rewarded for. Of course, in practice, your outcomes will vary from theory leading to under or overperformance. A casino has a 1% edge on the dollars bet at the blackjack tables. But for any one gambler, the actual results will almost always be wildly different. The theoretical profit requires a large sample size. But make no mistake, the casino's theoretical vs realized profit converges over time.
The same is true for investors.
Prepare Yourself From Your Future Self
The downside of diversification is that when you look back at your portfolio you will always regret not putting all your bets on what turned out to be the best horse.
The antidote to this regret is easy:
When you periodically look at your portfolio jot down a simple ranking of which investments you think will fare best over some time frame. When you look back you will see that your rankings were worthless predictors. That's all you need to give the concept of diversification its day in court. It will have all charges dropped against it.
- A casino that offers roulette and slots can afford to accomodate more tourist betting than a casino that only offers roulette. That casino can therefore afford to undercut other casinos and remain equally profitable in risk/reward terms. If you scale this logic up, you realize that the highest bidder for any opportunity is the entity that is most efficient in warehousing the associated risk. So individual investments are almost always overpriced from your point of view. Full discussion (Link)
- To understand correlation's impact see Your Portfolio Intuition Is Poor (Link)
- The CFA did a comprehensive study of commodity returns and a key finding was:
Commodities do especially well during periods of inflation with the attribution due to spot returns. In fact, this is considered a potential reason why commodities offer lower expected returns than stocks. There is less compensation required because you are receiving a high inflation hedge.
In other words, the standalone benefits of investing in commodities are absent. Unless you are diversifying them with other investments you are losing. Likewise, someone investing in stocks can afford to pay more for them theoretically if they have diversifying exposures in commodities. (Unfortunately the link from my notes is dead)
- If you had private access to a machine that accepted pennies and spat out dollar bills this would be better. But the moment that machine were accessible to an open market its price would at minimum trade at a price that made the so-called global portfolio more efficient