Most people approaching retirement believe their job is to reduce risk. Get out of equities. Move into something safe. Ben Carlson disagrees — and he has the research to back it up.

Ben is Director at Ritholtz Wealth Management in the US, author of Risk and Reward (Harriman House, May 2026), and one of the most widely read financial writers working today. He's spent his career studying every major market crash in modern history — the Great Depression, Japan's lost decades, the dot-com bust, 2008 — and what they actually mean for long-term investors.

In this episode, Paddy and Ben cover the yin and yang of risk and reward, Japan's 35-year decline and why globally diversified investors still came out ahead, the three dimensions of risk tolerance (willingness, need, and ability), how to think about drawdown and bucketing, inflation psychology, and the only benchmark that actually matters for someone approaching retirement.

Ben's book Risk and Reward is available now in Kindle, paperback, and audiobook — read by Ben himself — from Harriman House.

Read the full blog post at www.informeddecisions.ie