Investments By:

Investments come in all shapes, sizes, and types. They are the dedication of current assets for a future purpose. Money put into a business is a common form of investment as is the purchase of stocks in order to build a nest egg for retirement. By:

Market investments can include common stocks or preferred stocks, purchased options, bonds, foreign currency, bank accounts, precious metals and IRA’s. Successful investing creates wealth. By:

Investments of money, expertise, and time can be conservative or aggressive, very safe or very risky, and can be lucrative or bring about financial disaster. Conservative investments have historically started with buying a home. By:

That was before sub prime mortgages artificially drove up the price of homes and then caused a near collapse of the real estate market and the devaluation of many real estate investment trusts. By:

Another conservative investment has been to devote a portion of one’s portfolio to precious metals. Gold bullion quadrupled in price from 2000 to By:

Keeping a reserve of cash has always been considered safe and conservative but during the runaway inflation of the late 1970’s the dollar lost a substantial amount of buying power. The stock market, over the years, has tended to outperform other investments. By:

Buying stocks can result in multiplying an investment but picking stocks is all important as is ongoing stock analysis. Understanding return on investment and how to maximize it, without undue risk, is the key. By:

Success often starts with choosing which type of investments to make and them making each individual investment. For example, as a recession mends itself, the stock market typically starts to go up halfway through the recession. There will be market leaders and there will be stocks that lag. By:

Many of the laggards will be targets for value investing. Value investing is choosing stocks with low price to earnings rations or stocks whose values are low in light of expected earnings. Famous investors such as Warren Buffett are champions of value investing. By:

In the depths of a recession stocks in companies that make basic consumer goods do well. The companies do not necessarily make more money. They simply continue to do business selling laundry soap, household cleaners, paper towels and the like. They become attractive because many other companies become so much less profitable. By:

Market timing is important because the best time to invest in a basic consumer goods company is typically just before the recession starts and the best time to get out of the same stock is typically when the recession starts to mend and other stocks start to rebound. By:

This is not so much to recommend the likes of Chlorox, Colgate, or Proctor and Gamble as to point out the advantages of market timing and stock trend analysis. By:

Looking to the future, investing in companies that have a good track record of turning basic research into paying products is an excellent bet. Many pharmaceutical giants got that way by reliably creating life saving and money making medicines derived from basic scientific research. By:

Small bio tech startups often are lucrative investments but stock analysis, familiarity with the market sectors involved and the company’s competitors, and knowledge of how a drug moves through the various FDA trials to final approval is critical to this time of investment. By: