Hi Brad,

I don't want to speak for Tom. But in our conversations, his and mine, we believe that volatility in security price reflects, yes, adjustments to new information, but mostly the short-term emotions of market participants. Real risk is something that jeopardizes a security issuer's ability to deliver on the value proposition of the security. This opens up the number of risks to be evaluated, and not all of them are necessarily captured in a single number, or even quantifiable for that matter.

Further, since equities, in the aggregate, over long periods of time deliver price appreciation in excess of inflation and relative to other securities, Tom believes volatility should be ignored when choosing securities. He and I will be discussing this more in the fourth piece in this series.

Hope that helps!

Jason