What counts as a 'high risk investment'?

The psychometric risk-tolerance assessment places investors on a scale relative to the base population.

We therefore want to avoid influencing the investor on what constitutes a 'high' (or 'low') risk investment – what matters is how comfortable each individual is with whatever for them is a high risk investment.

Since the questions have been given in exactly the same format to thousands of respondents (and since the statistical analysis tells us each question is effective in separating those who are high risk tolerance from those who are low) it is much more important (at this point in the process) to have a comparison of their intuitive responses relative to the broad population than to try to fine tune the interpretation of each question (which also rapidly involves jargon and technicalities and so often ends up also putting respondents off).

We have a clear and thorough methodology for mapping investor risk profiles to quantitative investment risk. However, this is to be applied after we have identified the appropriate risk profile and can then inform investors what absolute quantitative level of risk is right for them.