This is as precarious an investment environment as any that I have experienced during my two decades of investing. Prices of many securities and asset classes are optimistic, in some cases bordering on irrational. When the pendulum of the market swings so far towards greed, we need to be even more careful than we usually are in our capital allocation. Just because most market participants are in a generous mood does not decrease the amount of uncertainty facing businesses. What it does is make it very easy to lose large amounts of money and hard to make good returns.