This morning I had the pleasure of being buried in a mountain of paperwork– the penalty for trying to do basically anything in the financial system these days.

It seems that everything, from sending a wire transfer to establishing a new account, comes with endless bureaucratic hoops to jump through as you're forced to convince these people that you're not a criminal money laundering terrorist.

In my case I was opening a new brokerage account. And as I went through the process, the questionnaire asked me about my risk tolerance.

Was I seeking low risk and low returns? Or high risk and high returns?

This is one of the oldest fallacies in investing– the idea that risk and return go hand in hand.

I remember taking a personal finance class more than 20 years ago and seeing a neat little graph in the textbook showing a straight line at a perfect 45 degree angle: the higher the risk, the higher the reward.

Sadly there was no option for "None of the above." Because in truth I prefer strong returns with minimal risk.