Firm, Market, Self: The Three Risks of Owning Stock

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy walks through the three categories of risk that dominate the experience of owning stock: firm-specific risk, market risk, and behavioral risk. He explains why a stock's daily movement is mostly driven by company news, but why the broad market overwhelms those differences when it moves sharply—answering the listener's natural "which is it?" question. 

Using the 2008 financial crisis and the March 2020 pandemic crash as examples, Andy shows how fast and slow declines both punish panic-selling, just on different timelines. He closes with the observation that most of the gap between what individual investors earn and what the market returns isn't about picking the wrong stocks—it's about behavior.