Investor Insights

At the end of January, the market took a sledgehammer to the share price of Challenger (ASX:CGF) following a trading update. Clearly, many investors did not like what they saw. But was the update really that bad?   Exclusive Content This is exclusive content to subscribers on rogermontgomery. com.

As regular readers will know only too well, one of my pet peeves in investment markets is a lack of understanding of the role played by chance. A further rant on this topic follows. The issue – in a nutshell – is this: The performance of any risky investment strategy will be some combination of merit and luck.

Most investors have an intuitive sense of the benefits of diversification: it’s easy to see how having all your eggs in one figurative basket could end very badly if the chosen basket were to hit the rocks at some point and most people are more comfortable spreading things around a bit to achieve more consistent and predictable results.