BizBasics: ‘What Is Diversification?’

Investment dollars are like eggs — it’s risky to keep them all in one basket.

Rather than put themselves at the mercy of one investment’s ups and downs, many investors choose to diversify, spreading out their investments across multiple channels. A portfolio of multiple stocks can ease the extremes of the individual stocks’ volatility, and investors can decrease volatility even more by dividing investments across different asset classes: stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.

Darden Professor Rich Evans discusses the benefits of diversification in smoothing out the volatility of individual investments.

The BizBasics video series, created by the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, is designed to explain basic business concepts and common business buzz words.

About the Expert

Richard B. Evans

Donald McLean Wilkinson Professor of Business Administration

Professor Evans’ research and teaching focus is investment decision-making. He explores risk taking by mutual fund managers, the role of broker intermediation in mutual fund investing, the impact of commission bundling and other trading costs on portfolio performance and retail and institutional-investor behavior.

Evans has been cited by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine and published in the top finance journals: Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics. He has also taught Executive Education courses for investment professionals from Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Citizens Bank.

B.S., M.S., University of Utah; M.A., Ph.D., Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

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