- Resources
- Forex
- Collectible/Arts
- Bonds
- Funds
- Real Estates
- Stocks
- Crowdlending
- Cryptocurrencies
I will start with the first 6 of them. I will probably not focus on them later in this blog as I didn’t find a good way how to invest effectively in them. You can read about the last three that I invest in this article.
1) Resources
Why not buy some 10 tons of lithium and sell it at a higher price? Or 10 barrels of oil? Because I know nothing about it. I’m not interested in resources, not in my work or free time, so there is a little chance I may get some trustworthy opinion. It would be more of a gamble. What pieces of information get to my ears is about gold and silver. You can read about gold in almost every news from time to time. Unfortunately, I didn’t find a reliable way of investing in it. I do buy some gold, but I will write more about it in the next posts as my approach is a little off-topic for now.2) Forex
What does the exchange rate depend on? The result of one company? No, the result of every company from that state and the whole state together, not just economically but also politically and many more. There are too many factors for consideration. And I don’t have the capacity and interest to watch it. If I know everything about two countries (theoretically, I can focus on my homeland and then just one more country), I can still hardly predict what exchange ratio between them will be. To simplify all this, I would compare the GDP growth of the two countries. The currency of the one country that will have higher growth in the last years is most likely better to buy. I may experiment with this later on in this blog. As far as I get to know, if I want to invest, for example, into the dollar, it is best to open a dollar bank saving account and keep my money there. I will get some decent interest rate of hopefully +-1%. Keep my money in a savings account is ‘the right way of investing,’ or at least it is better than having thousands of dollars at home and hoping for their value to increase. If you keep your money in the savings bank account, you will improve the chance of making a profit. Another option that is even more powerful is to put them on some P2P platform and invest them into some loans. That will provide an even more significant boost to your investment.3) Collectible or Arts
If someone offers me, Mona Lisa, for €1, I’m buying it. Otherwise, there is a high chance I would have no idea what to buy that will bring me later value. The only advice I get is to buy cheap some art of starting artists and hope they will become famous once. Then the price for their work would sky-rocket and my investment either. Unfortunately, I’m still not aware of any starting artist.
The considerable situation was when I was looking for silver/golden bricks. You can always choose between brick and coin when you buy it physically. The coin is for the same weight as a brick little more expensive. Someone argues it has artistic value, and the price will rise faster. I checked some second-hand offers, and even more than 20 years old coins had a similar amount as regular golden bricks. That means there is no sense in buying golden coins if you don’t know what you are doing.
There were some coins their value get significantly higher than the others, but I didn’t understand the reason behind it. For me, they looked similar. The only rule I found was that some of the sets of coins were a little more valuable than one piece. You may have a broader knowledge of this area. If you do, don’t hesitate to write me some tips ;).
4) Bonds
I’m interested in this area, unlucky I haven’t found anything with enough good risk/interest ratio, so I have also not much to write towards this. I found many bonds with interest usually under 2%, sometimes a little higher. The problem was the higher interest I saw, the greater the risk was either. I didn’t find that impressive compared to shares or ETF, where potential increase may be much more significant.
And yes, USA bonds with +-2,5% per year for two years is the last thing I would think of. It is not much, and I would lose most of my profit due to conversation change and inflation. If you have some tips, again, let me know, please!
5) Funds
I also looked for some funds but didn’t find any exciting offer. Most of the time, I felt it is just a trap for ‘normal’ people, and founders of funds get money thru usually high fees. They don’t have to make any results and earn money through fees. If the fund is unsuccessful, they can close it and open another one and leave only the ones with a good reputation. If they earn something, they may even get more profit. If they lost money, it would not be their money they lost.
I’m not too fond of this philosophy, and unfortunately, I don’t believe it may be much different in reality. I think the mangers of the funds usually hide behind diversification and mask of authority. They can’t say what will bring value and whatnot, much more than anyone else. I think much smarter is to buy shares or ETF directly.
On the other hand, the fund should have enough resources to invest in in-depth analyses and get information one person may hardly obtain. Having such an option is the real positive of investing in funds. Unfortunately, I would have to know someone personally inside a fund and trust him that he is doing everything he can to make the highest profit possible and doesn’t have high fees. In the end, the fund is usually a collection of stocks and bonds, and there are often alternatives in ETF with much smaller fees, or I can either buy the shares on my own.
6) Real Estate
I have read many blogs about people who wanted to become rentier and bought some house or flat to rent. Every single of them ends up with the conclusion that this is not a passive income. You have to care about the house, getting rent from people, and finding new renters. You may be more or less lucky on this.
I don’t say it is not a good investment, but as it is still far from me financially to afford buying some real estate, it is not my worries now. I will think carefully before buying one and focus a lot on the place, so it is not too far from my home. As my favorite blog publisher claims:
It is much less work and usually higher profit to rent a warehouse or other business parcel than houses.
Another idea is to buy and rent garages. The price and rent are usually smaller, so you can say you want six months of rent in front. Then you have half-year of no worries about the next payment.
Conclusion
As you can see, I have some ideas about how to invest in those instruments, but I have not tested them myself. For resources, I would think only about gold and silver bricks. If I bought a different currency as an investment, I would decide according to the growth of GDP and put that money somewhere where they can earn me something, like Crowdlending (it would be profitable on that plus conversation difference).
About arts or different collectibles, I’m not much aware of either what is in my capacity to buy and would bring me value later. The only advice is to buy from a starting artist who would sell for the low price of his work, and I can hope later he will become famous, and the price for his art will rise either. Bonds don’t provide high profit, and funds can be riskier than shares if you don’t know the fund managers. Finally, Real Estate is far from me financially, but the way I would look is buying some warehouse/commercial space or garage rather than flat.
I think it is essential to keep those options in mind, and perhaps later, I will learn something new about them. If you have any tips, let me know in the comments! About more exciting and affordable options for me, you can read in the following post.
