Index-provider MSCI has just published a survey of institutional investors' attitudes towards investment risk management that seems to show they are taking the issue more seriously than before the financial crisis. A close look shows they have begun to address one of the oldest failings of pre-crisis risk management - using volatility as a proxy for risk.

The tendency of an asset price to move up and down from day to day, or month to month, was introduced as a simple measure of its riskiness in the 1950s, when modern portfolio theory was being developed.