Putting our hard earned money in the stock market is a risky business. We may have put in our best research effort to ensure that all the financial, valuation and management factors are tip-top but there will be some hidden or external factors which investors do not know. We all do not want to see our portfolio lose money. It's risky to invest in stock market. We cannot eliminate risk but we can reduce our risk. So what do we do? We buy more individual stocks :) Study has shown that as we diverisified by buying into different stocks, our portfolio risk reduces. So when a particular sector or single stock is not doing well, it will not have a big impact on your portfolio as a whole. However, when there's a systematic risk of a global crisis eg the Great Financial Crisis in 2008, every stocks in the stock ......