I know you don't believe me, so get a calculator to prove it to yourself. Since we don't know when real losses will occur, it's better to invest like the tortoise. The tortoise, meanwhile, would have gotten little or no press attention. Yet, you would have been more likely to invest in Fund A, because its marketing literature would have bragged about its performance in Year One. Thus, you need to keep in mind that there is a big difference between investment returns and investor returns.
Standard deviation reveals a fund's true level of risk.
Yet investors who fail to examine standard deviation often place too much money in risky investments, with correspondingly disastrous results.