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Risk and Reward: How to handle market volatility and build long-term wealth
'Let me tell you the secret to investing. There is no secret.'
When investing your hard-earned money, risk and reward are attached at the hip. There are no shortcuts. Getting rich overnight is a pipe dream.
Author, podcast host, and Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management Ben Carlson CFA, offers a modern guide to surviving and thriving in the markets by taking a wrecking ball to his own investment philosophy to truly examine the good, the bad and the ugly.
Carlson contextualises the biggest risks of long-term investing by analysing key moments in global financial history. He examines everything from the Great Depression and its aftermath in the 1930s to the Japanese financial bubble of the 1980s, to the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the 2000s, and considers what modern investors can learn from these events to apply to their future trading strategies.
Part practical manual, part economic history, Risk & Reward will give you a better grasp of the biggest risks in investing and teach you how to protect yourself against them so you can survive the short-term, and thrive in the long-term.
Whether you’re a first-time saver or a lifelong investor, this book will change how you see risk – not as something to fear, but as the very reason reward exists.
When investing your hard-earned money, risk and reward are attached at the hip. There are no shortcuts. Getting rich overnight is a pipe dream.
Author, podcast host, and Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management Ben Carlson CFA, offers a modern guide to surviving and thriving in the markets by taking a wrecking ball to his own investment philosophy to truly examine the good, the bad and the ugly.
Carlson contextualises the biggest risks of long-term investing by analysing key moments in global financial history. He examines everything from the Great Depression and its aftermath in the 1930s to the Japanese financial bubble of the 1980s, to the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the 2000s, and considers what modern investors can learn from these events to apply to their future trading strategies.
Part practical manual, part economic history, Risk & Reward will give you a better grasp of the biggest risks in investing and teach you how to protect yourself against them so you can survive the short-term, and thrive in the long-term.
Whether you’re a first-time saver or a lifelong investor, this book will change how you see risk – not as something to fear, but as the very reason reward exists.
218 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 12, 2026
About the author
Ben Carlson
60 books57 followersBen Carson is the Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. The firm creates detailed investment plans and manage portfolios for institutions and individuals to help them achieve their goals.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 26, 2026
If you are already familiar with the Boglehead investing philosophy or have read the classic index-investing literature from a decade ago, there is absolutely nothing new here. Risk and Reward is essentially a rehash and summarization of concepts the Boglehead community has espoused for years. On the positive side, it serves as a very nice, clean refresher and a solid reminder of core principles, but it doesn't go beyond that.
May 21, 2026
Ben Carlson has written the rare investing book that is both intellectually honest and genuinely encouraging. A combination harder to pull off than it sounds.
A word on fit before you dive in: readers who already have a basic grasp of financial planning and investing mechanics will get the most out of this book. Carlson isn't teaching you what a mutual fund is; he's teaching you how to think once you've moved beyond 'should I invest?' to 'how do I not wreck this?' That distinction matters.
Risk & Reward doesn't pretend to hand you a formula for beating the market. Instead, it makes a compelling case for something more valuable: the mental framework to survive markets long enough to let compounding do its work. Carlson's deadpan wisdom cuts through the noise early. "Buy and hold is the worst form of investing, except for all the other investment strategies that have been tried from time to time," and he never really lets up.
What sets this book apart is its unflinching honesty about behavioral risk. Loss aversion, the urge to react, the seductive appeal of concentrated bets, Carlson names them all and explains why they are the real enemies of wealth. His observation that "you can't put a price on the ability to ignore what others around you are doing with their money" gets to the heart of the book.
A useful analogy occurred to me while reading: think of the slogan for the TV show, Survivor: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. Carlson makes a persuasive case that individual investors can't reasonably expect to outwit or outplay the market. But with discipline and a long horizon? You can absolutely outlast. The epilogue's 20 investing beliefs are a crisp, keep-it-forever summary.
If you're serious about building and protecting your wealth, this book belongs in your library.
A word on fit before you dive in: readers who already have a basic grasp of financial planning and investing mechanics will get the most out of this book. Carlson isn't teaching you what a mutual fund is; he's teaching you how to think once you've moved beyond 'should I invest?' to 'how do I not wreck this?' That distinction matters.
Risk & Reward doesn't pretend to hand you a formula for beating the market. Instead, it makes a compelling case for something more valuable: the mental framework to survive markets long enough to let compounding do its work. Carlson's deadpan wisdom cuts through the noise early. "Buy and hold is the worst form of investing, except for all the other investment strategies that have been tried from time to time," and he never really lets up.
What sets this book apart is its unflinching honesty about behavioral risk. Loss aversion, the urge to react, the seductive appeal of concentrated bets, Carlson names them all and explains why they are the real enemies of wealth. His observation that "you can't put a price on the ability to ignore what others around you are doing with their money" gets to the heart of the book.
A useful analogy occurred to me while reading: think of the slogan for the TV show, Survivor: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. Carlson makes a persuasive case that individual investors can't reasonably expect to outwit or outplay the market. But with discipline and a long horizon? You can absolutely outlast. The epilogue's 20 investing beliefs are a crisp, keep-it-forever summary.
If you're serious about building and protecting your wealth, this book belongs in your library.
May 22, 2026
Ben Carlson is one of the great financial writers of our time. I would put him right alongside Morgan Housel. Balancing risk is not overlooked in this book. He masterfully connects historical context to practical modern insight. There is no formula but there is patience and consistency. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is serious about investing.
May 25, 2026
I just loved this book! I read it all in 2 days during a rainy vacation and it was so interesting, I wish I had more to read. I wasn’t sure what to anticipate because I bought it right away before I heard many reviews but it was a great mix of charts and stories and history. Such a unique way to present the history of investing, the markets and how people react. Great book!
May 28, 2026
Nothing new here. Just a lot about the past and how risk and reward go together over long and short periods of time. Good graphs. Good author but probably a book not needed to be written.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews