What are investments and why are they so important? Is having an investment good?
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What a great question. Investing is one of the most important freedoms of a democratic society. There are many different things you can invest in. Savings bonds, mutual funds, stocks, real estate, your own business, etc. It also enables businesses and governments to raise capital to operate.\n\nPeople don't realize that the pension funded retirements we are all used to are disappearing. As individuals we are responsible for planning and funding our retirement, health care, education etc. Investments and good planning combined help people reach their goals.\n\nThere are thousands of different people who have based entire careers successfully investing in different ways.\n\nSearch Ben Stein and Suze Orman on Yahoo! They are both very knowledgeable on the subject of investing.\n\nHere are some good books and good people to learn about.\n\nHow to Make Money in Stocks - William J. O'Neil\nMaking of An American Capitalist - Roger Lowenstein\nBeating the Street - Peter Lynch\nThe Investors Edge - Gary Kaltbaum\n\nHere's some other good people to learn about: Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Kirk Kerkorian, Tim Truebenbach, Dave Landry.
612689
Well... what is your organization about, what does it do? what are your revenues based on, costs? how high are the investments? You cant just pose a question like that...
424132
The problem is the same with all investment.  There is the risk that you will lose some or all of your money.  Developing countries are especially high-risk in this regard because they frequently have political turmoil which could lead to the government (or pseudo-government) seizing/stealing your property.  Also, developing countries tend to have higher poverty and weak law enforcement, so your property is at risk for vandalism, destruction, or theft by criminals.\n\nThe solutions depend on how you actually plan to invest.  If you will be lending money to locals to establish a business, charge an appropriately high rate and do not put all of your money into one venture.  The rate must be high enough to offset your risk, but low enough to be affordable to your debtors.\n\nIf you intend to actually go into the country and establish a business, you must pay close attention to the security of your assets.  Do not expect the government to protect your property, and do not expect them to keep their word - even if it's in writing.  You must have adequate security to defend your property, and secrecy to hide as much as you can in case your defenses fail.\n\nIt is NOT easy to overcome those problems, which is why there is not more investment in developing countries.  It's really a bummer because investment and economic growth are precisely what are needed to stabilize the systems.
486120
I love to see questions like this in a forum like this. Few people know about these types of investments, They are offered only to people who meet certain financial criteria.\n\nBefore I retired, my firm specialized in these investments. What I learned about wealth was that you didn't need to make millions overnight. Creating wealth is about consistancy and longevity. The right kind of equipment leasing LP is a good investment for the right kind of investor.\n\nThe ones that my firm used to utilize offered a return of over 10% per year. This is a very respectable number. This was the income return, not the total return. Growth wasn't a major goal of the investment. Sometimes you got growth, sometimes you didn't. I sold them as an income opportunity with a  chance for capital growth and nobody ended up dissapointed.\n\nOur firm made in mandatory that you be considered an "Accredited investor" to quailfy to buy them. I don't know where you live but my advice to you on this subject is "Buyer beware". Purchasing this invvestment from a small regional brokerage firm or an LLP house can give you bad results like the Limited partnerships of the 1980's.\n\nSeek out large compaines like Merril Lynch or Raymond James. Raymond James has an entire section dedicated to what they call Alternative investments.\n\nI can give you some contact names if you wish.\n\nGood luck!
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CD is well known to be the safest investing instrument, but it's safe only if US dollar (or whatever your currency is) doesn't crash. However, given the current trend in US dollar, I am not too optimistic about that.\n\nAll other investment vehicles have varying degree of risk. If you have never invested before, I don't recommend any but suggest that you should spend at least a year to learn about investing before actually doing it. You can begin by reading books and articles from the www.richdad.com and www.investopedia.com. \n\nAnother thing I would like you to understand - If you don't accept any risk, why should you be awarded with any gain? The real idea about investing isn't to avoid risk, but to take limited, calculated risk for potential gain that's (very) likely to be at least a few times more than what you risk. To do that, educating yourself is of primary importance. If you can't accept any risk, or want not to spend time on learning how to, you should not invest.
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Why is this an "investing" question?
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Investment creates capital.  Capital requires labor.  More investment means there is more demand for labor and thus rising wages.  \n\nForeign investment is particularly insensitive to wages; foreign investors are so happy to hire people at lower wages compared to their home countries that they don't mind paying a substantial premium over the local wage level.
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There are plenty of ways to invest and also plenty of investments in which you can loose your money. \n\nfarm land. buy it and rent it out to farmers or go shares\n\nrental properties. maintenance can be a nightmare though, but the tax advantages are terrific\n\nrare coins, stamps, baseball cards, comic books, etc. but you have to spend a lot of time and energy persuing that venue. \n\nvacation home. but not in a huricane prone area.\n\nthose are some of your options. Now let's talk stocks\n\nYou say you are invested in stocks but how diversified is your portfolio?  Do you have 50% of your porfolio invested outside the U S? Is a portion invested where the future growth is expected to be? India, China
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I work for a company that promotes this for organizations.  If employees are healthy and keep healthy, their productivity is good.  With good productivity, there are better profits, and thus it is a good investment to promote health programs.  As far as safety, same applies.  With safe environment, less injuries, more productivity, more profits, less worker compensation insurance premiums, etc.  So therefore, whenever productivity is good and profits are good . . . due to health and safety programs . . . they can be considered an investment.
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There are a lot in shares and bonds. It is also depending on your purpose also (e.g. if you are an investor, speculator or just want to study shares and bonds).\n\nTo me, the following things are important and must know:\n- what is shares and the difference between shares and bonds\n- how trading works\n- the relationship between risk and returns\n- the factors affecting share price and bond price\n- how to estimate the underlying share company and the bonds
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First of all, unless you have a lot of money, typically you're not going to get advice from a financial adviser(they get paid the big ones).  Before you begin investing you need to saturate your brain with key terms and types of investment products out there.  A good website that has a lot of beginner's tools is Fool.com\nRun by the Gardner brother's their website has free articles to get you a good idea of different investments and methods for investing
92347
If you want to be 100% safe long term bank deposits would be safest. Next best thing are bank bonds/certificates the Gov't Banks issue out.\n\nOf course, investing in anything else would introduce risks and possibly increased returns/losses.\n\nAny investment that probably promises me anything more than 5% with no risk would be highly questionable.
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Mutual funds are a "basket of stocks" that allow you to have an ownership in a more diversified way. Check out ETF's a newer wrinkle on fund investing.\n\nread education links at bobbrinker.com
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People ask questions like this all the time, but the very nature of your question is not clear. What do you mean by "best investment"? You always have to consider risk/reward ratio. How much risk can you take? What are your goals in investing? How much can you afford to lose? There are no easy answers. You need to first clarify what your goals are and what kind of pain you can or cannot handle. Once you've done that, you need to find an investment that meets those parameters. No holy grails out there, my man. Good luck.
933730
First,  risk and reward go together.  Without risk, you might as well put the money into a savings account, or government bonds.\n\nSecond, if you don't understand a business, putting money into one is a good way to learn how it works - and to lose a lot of money in the process of making a lot of mistakes.\n\nThird, getting excellent investment ideas from strangers on the internet is a sure-fire way to lose money.\n\n\nSo, the best business is one that you understand well, know where the problems (and mistakes) are likely to be, and one that you have both passion to be good at, and perseverance to stay with when times aren't so good.\n\nWhat are you good at?  What are you passionate about?  How hard are you planning to work to be successful?  Start there, and research the market -- competitors, customers, growth prospects, barriers to entry, etc.\n\nFor one area, people have done very well in real estate (buying low priced properties, fixing them up and reselling them or renting them out for the cash flow.)   The tax advantages can mitigate a lot of risk.   But you need to know what you're getting into.\n\nGood luck.
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There is not enough information to answer your question.\n\nHow much is a large lump sum?\nWhat is a good investment?\n\nThe highest return is always the highest risk \nThe minimal risk is always the lowest return (Goverment Bonds get you 4% a year with minimum risk)\n\nYou can start by opening a brokerage account at ameritrade.com\n\nDrop me a line if you need detailed information about investments in the stock market.
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Invest firstly in your (financial) education. There are a lot of books out there that can help you with that. Always be aware that if a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with the experience gets the money, and the man with the money gets the experience.\n\nEducation always provides the best foundation for investing.