Imagine this: a friend presents his portfolio of investments. It cries out “all eggs, one basket.” All of his money invested in IT stocks. Yes, last year was, in a positive sense, a rollercoaster. Now, though, the voyage is far more suspenseful. Not too far off. Now enter the hero your financial narrative requires: diversify guy.

Consider your fortune as a potluck feast. Everybody brings a food they love. One guy bringing just chips is a carb-overload disaster. Imagine now someone brings a main, a side, a dessert, even that unusual salad nobody knows—your meal has complexity. Diversity does for your assets exactly that. Cash, bonds, real estate, blue-chip stocks, some foreign business enterprises. Stir them together. One section ruins; another sweetens the meal.

Let us pop the hood and explore. You have no crystal ball yet you want to ace your future. Though hope alone cannot feed any family, trends give you hope. Markets may be more erratic than a squirrel driven by caffeine. Now let us consider diversification. Having a stack of assets spread among nations and sectors is like building a safety net under a tightrope walker—fall—and you bounce instead of break. It lessens the shock of unexpected falls.

Say you are investing for your children rather than for yourself. Here is a narrative: since everyone else was doing it, a family friend bought up on just local mining stocks. Boom, market fell, and her nest egg emerged as scrambled eggs. She came to know, sadly, that trend-following is not a golden goose. Spread out. Guy would have advised including renewable energy, healthcare, even a small bit of real estate trust or two. One poor year would not have been a disaster.

Of course, there is a reverse side—spreading too thin. You taste only bread, much as when you jam so much on your toast. You want enough diversity that risk is shared, not so many that monitoring feels like herding cats. Should you go after developing markets? Explore art? Purchase tokens on a blockchain? Moderation of flavor brings taste. A balanced spread keeps returns pouring in while risk stays in its lane with some study—no crystal ball required.

Avoid the trap of believing you have to become proficient in sophisticated financial language. For a lot of the tough work, boring, broad-basket index funds can help you. If you have a gambler’s soul, sprinkle them with some more dangerous notions; but, preserve your sharp intellect.

One last hint: have conversations with individuals. Not only the loudmouth on social media alerting you to gold, but careful people who survived cycles before you could spell “diversification.” Diversify Guy listens more than he speaks as well. Always brings extra salad to the picnic; keeps his finger on the pulse; ear to the ground.

Recall: don’t let your portfolio come out like bread from last week’s stale. Change it. Diverse Guy operates in this manner. You might want to as well.