The concept of risk management receives a lot of attention in the investment realm, and rightly so. Chasing return directly, by contrast, is almost certainly doomed to failure. In other words, risk management is the only game in town. But talking about it is one thing; applying it in a meaningful, productive way that delivers satisfactory results is something else. There’s no hard data that tells us how the world practices risk management, but I’m guessing that a surprising number of investors aren’t doing justice to this fundamental concept. With that in mind, let’s kick the tires a bit on what can be a fuzzy topic for the average investor. After all, this is one corner where mistakes are almost always costly if not fatal in a financial sense.