Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Accepting high volatility for high long-term returns
Modern portfolio theory has a strong theoretical background and its conclusions on the risk/return trade-off have a lot of good supporting evidence.  However, the conclusions it draws need to be used very carefully when thinking about retirement investing.  If you were really just trying to just pick the one investment that you would guess would make you the most money in the future then yes, given no other information, the riskiest asset would be the best one.   However, for most people the goal retirement investing is to be as sure as possible to retire comfortably.  If you were to just invest in a single, very risky asset you may have the highest expected return, but the risk involved would mean there might be a good chance you money may not be there when you need it. Instead, a broad diversified basket of riskier and safer assets leaning more toward the riskier investments when younger and the safer assets when you get closer to retirement tends to be a better fit with most people's retirement goals.  This tends to give (on average) more return when you are young and can better deal with the risk, but dials back the risk later in life when your investment portfolio is a majority of your wealth and you can least afford any major swings.  This combines the lessons of MPT (diversity, risk/return trade-off) in a clearer way with common goals of retirement. Caveat:  Your retirement goals and risk-tolerance may be very different from other peoples'.  It is often good to talk to (fee-only) financial planner.