If you consider that "you don't know any better" and returns are normally distributed (i.e. you don't have some secret sauce nobody else knows about), then there is no dimension in which the 10/10 is better.
You can convince yourself intuitively by imagining how you would maximize each strategy. The amount of money you have is a factor of the risk you take, because if you want to do something risky you will not be able to borrow much, whereas if you want to do something safe you can easily borrow.
That is, you objective is to maximize your expected return, under the constraint of not breaking your risk limit.
Suppose you have a 10% annualized volatility risk tolerance. That's your budget.
If you invest it all in a 10% average return / 10% annual vol strategy, that's it.
Now if I propose you a 5% average return / 1% volatility strategy, you just have to go to the bank and borrow 10x your capital. You will have the same risk exposure (in dollar), but 5x the expected returns.
Is 10x borrowing even an option if we are talking retirement savings?
I don't know much about finance. I guess that at that point (you borrowed 10 times your net worth). This is no longer your investment, it's your lender's investment. They will adjust interest rate to match the riskiness of whatever you are doing, leaving you with net zero.
> Is 10x borrowing even an option if we are talking retirement savings?
Of course it is, though not exactly by "borrowing money" in a "mortgage" sense. Margin trading is a way to take leverage, derivatives is another. The former is simpler but costly, the latter is cheaper and allows you much more than 10x leverage, though it requires some high school mathematical thinking.
What you're saying sounds right. But in practice, no one is going to lend me, a nobody, 5x my money. At least outside real estate, that's it's own crazy alternate reality.
If you consider that "you don't know any better" and returns are normally distributed (i.e. you don't have some secret sauce nobody else knows about), then there is no dimension in which the 10/10 is better.
You can convince yourself intuitively by imagining how you would maximize each strategy. The amount of money you have is a factor of the risk you take, because if you want to do something risky you will not be able to borrow much, whereas if you want to do something safe you can easily borrow.
That is, you objective is to maximize your expected return, under the constraint of not breaking your risk limit.
Suppose you have a 10% annualized volatility risk tolerance. That's your budget.
If you invest it all in a 10% average return / 10% annual vol strategy, that's it.
Now if I propose you a 5% average return / 1% volatility strategy, you just have to go to the bank and borrow 10x your capital. You will have the same risk exposure (in dollar), but 5x the expected returns.