[veeenu]

You are not misunderstanding. While there is no doubt that there is a premium on taking more risk, ROI is also a very debatable metric to consider in a vacuum, though. If you only care about ROI then you either can afford to risk everything because you have cash/safer investments in place (so you are really taking less risk), or you are YOLOing.

> it could tank your investment, but if it doesn't and you make more money then you're criticizing something that never happened

This way of reasoning is basically survivorship bias in a nutshell, and per my direct experience as a financial professional has brought down many investors who were too confident about their "strategy".

To bring this argument to the extreme: if you cared only about ROI, you could just go long some penny stock with exaggerate leverage and make big money "unless proven otherwise". In practice, what happens is you get euphoric for a couple days while you see the money shoot up to the sky, and then lose all of it to a margin call at the opening the very next day. I've seen it happen with my own eyes.