Predicting investment risk is challenging for a plethora of reasons, including the complexity of markets, the uncertainty factor, and of course basic human behaviour, As many industry experts and personal finance posts have professed, it is important to acknowledge that risk in the financial markets can never be completely eliminated.

Given these challenges, investors may employ various strategies to mitigate risk, such as di-ver-si-fi-cation and stress testing, but it is important to remember that these tools can only help manage risk and predicting investment risk with complete certainty will always remain elusive.

My guest today is Dr Adrian Saville, who I’ve begged to be on my show for many months, and he finally agreed to do so. Saville is an Investment Specialist at Genera Capital, a family office outfit and Professor in Economics, Finance, and Strategy at Gibs Boundless World. He also recently presented at the Fiduciary Institute of Southern Africa (or Fisa for short) annual conference on the foundations of Investment success. He said and I quote: 'Returns follow risk. Full Stop." And that is what we will be talking about today. The Building blocks required to build a wall of defence against risk.