There are two kinds of risk in equity markets, first the overall market or asset class risk. Second is individual risk. First risk is not under control of anyone, because it can hit the market due to any reason, right from any geopolitical uncertainty to any monetary event in any part of the world. Probably the first kind of risk got played recently with the flip flop of the US and development in the middle east. The second risk which is individual risk is about the choice of the stock which one buys. In equities after a point of time it is more important to manage individual risk than to take risk. In equities the risk is more in the short term, over longer term, it is not very high. One way to manage risk is that when valuations are high, move to companies which have strong and large balance sheets and have seen many economic cycles and have survived the slowdowns in the past.
