Broadly speaking, there are two main categories of risk:
1.systematic risk and
2.unsystematic risk.
Systematic risk is the market uncertainty of an investment, meaning that it represents external factors that impact all companies in an industry or group.
Unsystematic risk represents the asset-specific uncertainties that can affect the performance of an investment.
Below is a list of the most important types of risk for a financial analyst to consider when evaluating investment opportunities:
- Systematic Risk – The overall impact of the market
- Unsystematic Risk – Asset-specific or company-specific uncertainty
- Political/Regulatory Risk – The impact of political decisions and changes in regulation
- Financial Risk – The capital structure of a company (degree of financial leverage or debt burden)
- Interest Rate Risk – The impact of changing interest rates
- Country Risk – Uncertainties that are specific to a country
- Social Risk – The impact of changes in social norms, movements, and unrest
- Environmental Risk – Uncertainty about environmental liabilities or the impact of changes in the environment
- Operational Risk – Uncertainty about a company’s operations, including its supply chain and the delivery of its products or services
- Management Risk – The impact that the decisions of a management team have on a company
- Legal Risk – Uncertainty related to lawsuits or the freedom to operate
- Competition – The degree of competition in an industry and the impact choices of competitors will have on a company