A successful portfolio is a combination of low risk decisions that hedge the high risk of things like low cap stocks. A portfolio without risk is a portfolio with a very low return on investment (ROI). The need to engage in risk is important, because it will create opportunities to increase the ROI vastly. Hedging that risk is where the long term low returns stock comes in; this will keep an investor from losing everything if they make a bad decision. High risk stocks require a greater amount of research, due to the large impact they have on a portfolio.