[addaon]

> If you have $TICKER that you expect to yield 5%, you wouldn't buy it because you undertake risk to invest in a company to get 5%.

If the expected value of the investment is 5%, that expectation incorporates the risk. There's a chance it yields -100%, there's a chance it yields 5%, there's a chance it yields 100%, etc. If your value of money is linear, you shouldn't have a preference between a(n individual) 5% investment with high variance and one with low variance. It's perfectly reasonable to prefer low variance for a given expected return, but it's also perfectly reasonable to prefer high variance; and of course a portfolio has an expected return and variance that's a non-trivial combination (due to correlated movement) of its individual investments.