Investors should be aware of the risks they are exposed to within a portfolio and when they're being paid to take risk (or not). A different approach is needed to build portfolios with better risk awareness.

Breaking Unconventional Monetary Policy (B.U.M.P.) and it's impact on global financial stability is the key risk for the foreseeable future.

Breaking Unconventional Monetary Policy is not an asymmetric outcome - it is like 50 shades of grey, whips included, particularly for emerging markets.

Change is stirring and markets do not like uncertainty. Breaking Unconventional Monetary Policy is a catalyst for slower economic growth and deflation - market volatility will only increase in 2014.

Breaking Unconventional Monetary Policy is going to prove too hard to achieve. Central Banks will run scared of their political masters; QE or an equivalent will recommence.

Three key shock risks will affect investors over the next decade, requiring a real difference in how we construct portfolios for retirement.

The Fed will have to think of a new strategy to reopen the availability of credit - and that is a problem. At present, all routes of Bernanke's QE maze lead to the same exit - deflation.

The EU faces another stomach-churching Summer and Autumn, while the Euro correction has started. At least Australian velocity of money is painting a pretty positive picture.

Five pillars of risk neatly encapsulate the main areas of risk and contagion that all investors should be watching. In the changing risk environment, the key is to determine which parts of the world are actually paying you to take risk, and which areas are definitely not.

Markets had a very good run in Q1 2013. But which parts of the world are actually paying you to take risk, and which areas are definitely not?

EU ministers understand the law but they totally miss the behavioural economic consequences of their actions.

The US fiscal cliff; global slowdown; EU crisis; Middle East and oil prices; and contagion risk.

The main areas of risk and contagion that investors may wish to consider in 2013.

Four key risks - the US fiscal cliff, EU debt crisis, global slowdown, and Middle East - are highly interconnected and yet to truly impact markets.

Are investors being paid enough to take on risk in the current market? Are systemic risks just as bad as in 2007? What is the best risk mitigator?

The field of emotional finance emphasises the difference between actual and perceived risk. Perceived risk may be at its lowest when actual risk is highest...