There are entire departments at major brokerage and trading firms which exist solely to quantify the risk of the firm's portfolio in regards to world events, market events, financial changes (interest rates, etc.). Risk is readily quantifiable -- whether firms take proper steps to deal with the risk while pursuing profits is the question.
Unless I misunderstand you - you're talking in terms of profit or loss. That is not risk. That is funds, i.e futures margin, deployed going long or short. The risk is whether or not the trade will work out or not.
Whether the trade will work out is actually; probability. That is what most traders ignore or don't take into account when taking a trade. Big mistake! The (actual risk) is the adverse move price made before it gave you your profit. That is the only risk that means anything and is also an indicator of one's chart reading skills for entry and exits. The structured risk is one's max loss they will allow themselves to take. Most traders design trades with a structured risk and a structured Profit target and they try to give the structure a good R:R in it's design. However. since it is impossible to know for certain what the market will do just structuring a good Reward to Risk for example 4:1 is only theory in theory and the market knows nothing about our theories. Nevertheless, when we look at the trading contextual environment and can learn to assign the "probability" of the trade working out in a positive way based upon the designed theoretical structure then we are assuming better odds for placing a reasonable bet. Otherwise, without considering probability our trade structure with it's good R:R is just a good sounding, good looking work of art but in the end is just a theory and in no way means we will become profitable.