Diversification
Diversification is a risk management technique that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. The rationale behind this technique contends that a portfolio of different kinds of investments will, on average, yield higher returns and pose a lower risk than any individual investment found within the portfolio.
Diversification strives to smooth out unsystematic risk1 events in a portfolio so that the positive performance of some investments will neutralize the negative performance of others. Therefore, the benefits of diversification will hold only if the securities in the portfolio are not perfectly correlated.2
1 Unsystematic risk includes company and industry developments specific to individual securities. The effect of these can be reduced through sufficient diversification.