Everyone talked about how much riskier the investment climate was immediately following the global financial crisis. But was it really?

I’d argue the period of time leading up to the global financial crisis was a lot riskier than the period following it. Going into the global financial crisis, there were a lot more things that could go wrong and almost no one was paying any serious attention to them. Oh, there were plenty of voices crying out in the wilderness warning about the impending financial market meltdown. But most of these were treated as Cassandras, alarmists, party spoilers. Everyone was making too much money to attempt to pull in their oars and hunker down the ship until the storm blew over.

Once the markets collapsed, however, investors suddenly had much fewer options. That means there were far fewer things that could go wrong, and most of the things that could go wrong were now known. So, while everyone’s awareness of risk was elevated, the actual ris