Wealth creation takes place when cash flow is steady, there is time to recover losses, and risk is tolerable.
It's not uncommon for the ability to take risk in the market to be confused with the desire to gamble. There are some risks worth taking, and some risks that can turn an investment account into a sophisticated platform for placing bets.
Of course, it's a lot of fun to do research and be immersed in the latest information about a company or an industry with the hopes of taking action before the market does. Consider, though, the amount of other individuals, and more importantly institutions and mutual funds, that are trying to do the same thing.
By the time you read a Bloomberg News headline, the market has already reacted. By the time the company you're following discovers a new reserve, institutions have already started trading. The ability of the collective players in the market to price a security as soon as new information develops is intimidating.
It's easy to think that with enough research, it should be possible to outsmart the market by predicting new information before it happens, but new information develops randomly. If we could predict all new information accurately we wouldn't need the market to create wealth.
So what's a risk worth taking? It has been proven through years of research that small cap and value stocks produce superior returns over the long term. Constructing a portfolio tilted toward these asset classes can increase expected returns without relying on speculation. With these tilts in place, diversifying globally, and across asset classes can almost eliminate non-systematic risk. You may never make 200% on a speculative bet, but major losses will likewise be reduced.
In creating wealth, the sequence of returns is just as important as the returns themselves. It's very difficult to beat the long term compounded returns of a robust portfolio with a series of speculative bets.
This may not sound exciting, and it shouldn't. Well documented research stands behind these remarks - I'm talking about using science to invest, and science is not nearly as exciting as gambling.