Finance
5 Essential Tips for Successful Fund and Asset Investment
Investing can be intimidating, but certain tried-and-true principles can help boost your chances for success. Some basics include riding winners and selling losers, avoiding hunches or hot tips, and diversifying your savings.
Understand your goals, time frame and risk tolerance. Stocks are generally considered more risky than bonds or cash investments but can offer the greatest potential for returns.
Know Your Goals
Knowing your goals can make or break your investing success. Your financial plans should be clear, specific, and quantifiable so that you can measure your progress toward them.
For example, saving for retirement should be one of your top financial goals because it will likely impact all your other goals. Knowing how much you need to keep and when you need it will allow you to create a realistic investment plan that aligns with your goals.
Similarly, knowing your long-term financial goals and how much risk you are willing to take as an investor is important. This information can help you decide how to split your investments between different asset classes. For example, if you are close to retirement, your assets may be better diversified in bonds than stocks.
Know Your Risk Tolerance
The amount of risk you can comfortably take with your investments is known as your risk tolerance. This personal choice should align with your goals and timeline for achieving them.
For instance, if you have a mortgage, children in college and elderly parents who depend on your income, you may be less able to ride out a volatile market or accept investment losses than if you were single without any major financial obligations. This can make you hesitant to invest more aggressively, even when it could be in your best interest.
Your risk tolerance can also change over time, so it’s good to work with a trusted financial professional who can help shape your investment philosophy and suggest products that align with it.
Know Your Time Frame
The time you have until you need to use the money can affect the risks you take. It can also determine your long-term investment strategy.
The longer your time horizon, the more you can stomach the volatility of stocks, which offer higher returns on average than bonds and cash but tend to have more frequent bouts of decline.
For retirement investors, for instance, your advisor recommends trimming the stock allocation of a portfolio as it approaches your target date to lower your risk exposure. Some financial experts rebalance their portfolios on a calendar schedule, while others prefer to let the investments they own tell them when it’s time.
Be Patient
If you want to succeed, you need to stick with your plan. That means investing regularly and checking in on your portfolio at least once a year (more often if necessary). Market fluctuations can cause your asset allocation to shift out of alignment, impacting your investment experience.
As you consider the best fund or asset investments to match your goals, risk tolerance and time frame, remember that attempting to “time the market” is a losing strategy. To beat the market consistently, you must predict when to get out and when to get back in at just the right times.
This is nearly impossible to do over a long period. This is why planning and diversifying are so important.
Diversify
Remember the old saying: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Diversifying your portfolio means spreading your money across different assets, which reduces risk.
Diversification can also help you achieve better returns. For example, if your investments all fall in value at the same time (which can happen when interest rates rise), having assets that do well at those times can offset the losses of others.
Many investment companies offer diversified funds to buy various asset classes easily. Another option is to use a robo-advisor, which will ask you some basic questions about your goals and risk tolerance, then build a diversified portfolio for you. These services typically charge a small fee for their advice. But investing in them can be more affordable than buying individual stocks and paying transaction fees.
Resources:
https://www.bankrate.com/investing/investment-strategies-for-beginners/
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/00/082100.asp