"That will never happen to this country." (Timothy Geitner in response to suggestions that the U.S. Treasury may one day lose its Aaa credit rating.)

David McMillan CFP, RFC is co-founder of Boulder, Colorado based Caledonia Wealth Management, Ltd., serving high net worth families and individuals.

David’s financial expertise is largely focused on sustainable investment practices and investment solutions and follows a philosophy of achieving growth while reducing downside risk through tactical portfolio design. His areas of expertise extend to alternative investments, separate account management and international opportunities.

Due diligence is one of the cornerstones of risk management for an investor. If you don’t perform due diligence, you are more likely to lose money. Not only should you gather all the data and information you need to make an informed decision, you should also verify that the data and information you use is itself reasonably correct and accurate. Bad data cannot lead to good decisions.

There is so much information available today, and so much of that is processed, packaged and repackaged that it is difficult to be certain of the accuracy of what you read. That’s why you should go to primary source documents as much as possible to verify data before taking capital risk based on what you have obtained from secondary sources of processed data.