Look Down Not Up

INVESTORS SHOULD VIEW THEMSELVES not as pursuers of performance, but as managers of risk. The fact is, nobody has a clue what will happen next in the financial markets, so we shouldn't waste time fretting over something we can't control. Instead, we should focus on the stuff we can influence--how much we save, our portfolio's tax bill, our investment costs and how much risk we take.

I tackle the topic of risk in this weekend's column. Investors seem increasingly obsessed with performance, but risk remains my big worry: The benchmark 10-year Treasury is yielding no more than the core inflation rate, while the S&P 500's cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio is above 26, versus a 50-year average of 19.6.