If you had a moderate sum of money to invest in the current climate, what would you do with it? Stocks? Mutual funds? ETFs? Real estate? Something else?
Bogleheads has a lot of advice about investing in a low cost, relatively low risk, relatively simple way:<p><a href="https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started" rel="nofollow">https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started</a><p>If you sign up for the Bogleheads forum & follow the template to describe your financial situation you will likely get some reasonably good feedback & ideas.
I would check out the book "The Simple Path to Wealth", or the authors blog at jlcollinsnh.com and read up on his suggestions. Its all about mutual funds and low risk
Depends on your situation. This is essential first reading imo: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Investor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Investor</a><p>If you still had questions and more money than the average bear, find a financial professional.
Depending on your time horizon, I recommend 3 pots:<p>1) Need in the next 1-2 years - Money market account<p>2) 3-7 years - value funds (either ETF or Mutual funds)<p>3) 7+ - growth funds (either ETF or Mutual funds)<p>Individual stocks take effort to watch. Make sure you do not buy just before a dividend (you will pay tax on the money they give back to you). Watch for bad news, so you can pull your money before they go bankrupt.<p>ETF are lightly managed, your money grows as that segment grows. Which is not a bad idea.<p>Mutual funds - someone is actively watching it. Which can hopefully mean it avoids a bad turn, but it can burn money being churned.<p>Safest bet is an EFT that tracks the S&P 500<p>I expect Real Estate funds to take a gut punch when things open up and the businesses fold and they have no rent coming in. So I plan to put money there, after it falls.
The most important rule is: <i>buy low, sell high</i>. If you don't do that you just spending money.<p>In order to accomplish that rule you have to generally do the opposite of what is popular, but in a meaningful way.<p>When the market began crashing I sold shares from my healthy mutual funds and bought a lot of stocks in airlines and cruises. People aren't going to stop flying. Eventually those markets will recover and I recently bought shares at about 25-33% of their recent value. Now I just have to wait out the pandemic and for business to return to normal.