Companies providing longer _ much longer _ warnings to investors.(Chicago Tribune)

Everything, poet Alexander Smith wrote, is sweetened by risk.

That would make investing life's bottomless sugar bowl.

Risk is inherent in investing, and the warnings are ubiquitous: Past performance is no guarantee of future results; corporate "forward-looking statements" involve certain risks, and in futures and options, investors can lose all or more than their original investments.

Behind the boilerplate, the stark reality of those risks has been driven home time and again of late. Investor advocates and regulators are pushing companies to improve the amount and quality of disclosure about their finances and prospects.

The result, experts said, is a boomlet in companies providing an expanded _ and sometimes massive _ discussion of broad risk factors in their corporate 10K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, essentially telling investors: Don't say we didn't warn you.

Heads up, members of the Shareholder Nation: It seems that poor quarterly results can affect a company's stock price. Losing major customers hurts revenue. The economy is iffy. The competition is brutal. A hurricane could hit corporate headquarters. And, as one prison operator warned investors, more people might start obeying the law.

"More is not necessarily better," said Louis Thompson Jr., president and chief executive of the National Investor Relations Institute and a prominent advocate of improved corporate disclosure. "The notion that you have to have a 10,000-word discussion of risk factors goes almost to the point of absurdity."