The key is to get each participant into the correct portfolio, based on his or her goals, timing and risk tolerance.

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There remains a risk in terms of timing: cut too early and it could jeopardise the country's fragile economic recovery. (The latest figures show a services sector in reasonable upswing but manufacturing considerably weaker than expected.) But before this week there was also a danger of Britain's debt crisis getting out of hand.

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Besides proper stock selection and timing, handling losses is the most important part of risk management.

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The Fed has shifted from a sole focus on the timing of tapering purchases to a two-sided policy risk.

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But with high risk comes high reward, especially when the timing is right.

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Apart from his boundless appetite for risk, his main strength was his sense of timing: he sold most of his assets shortly before the 1987 stockmarket crash.

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But, even if the Democrats' timing had been better, they would still have been taking a big risk.

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It utilizes a proprietary hedging program with puts and calls, seeking to reduce risk and avoid sector, interest-rate and market-timing risks.

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You begin to understand how to capture the rewards associated with taking risk and this guides you to make better decisions and allows your timing to become more fluid.

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More striking was the phenomenon's sensitivity to timing: sons conceived at the height of the famine (March-April 1945) showed the highest relative risk of schizophrenia.

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