If you’re thinking of moving into the investment market, it’s important to be aware of some basic tips for how to make the most of your money without taking on any undue risks.
There are several areas that you should be focusing on, which can include working out a reasonable rate of return on your investments, diversifying your portfolio, and exploring software options for organising your money as you take on more risk. These, and other tips for new investors, can be found below.
1. Understanding Different Markets
Before making an investment, compare different markets and see which type will be best for you.
If you want to make a relatively low risk investment, then a pension or an ISA with stocks and shares can produce a reasonable return over time. Higher risk investments can be made in Forex, stocks and shares, and other fast-changing markets, which can produce a decent return if you’re prepared to absorb some risk. Beginner investors can also look into penny stocks if they want to practice without creating a significant liability for themselves.
2. Building a Reasonable Rate of Return
Work out what your rate of return should be to keep yourself afloat, and be realistic about what your goals are. Again, it pays to understand what the yield and margin of error is for different markets, so ensure that you get advice on how to best use your investments.
3. Diversify Early
A diversified portfolio spreads risk and can ensure that cashflow is relatively stable; this is something that you ideally want to work towards, while being aware of the different options available when you first start putting money into a market.
4. Learn How to Use Dollar-Cost Averaging
One relatively low risk strategy that you can take as an investor, dollar-cost averaging means investing uniform amounts of money in different areas over time, effectively building a small rate of return without taking any unnecessary risks; this can be a good idea if you want to try to limit your potential losses.
5. Use Investment and Trading Apps
You can make things easier on yourself by taking on investment and trading software to help you manage your money. Software can be used to run real-time reports on the past performance of stocks and shares, and can be partly automated so that your investments are properly managed without having to be manually inputted.
6. Pick The Right Pension Plan
For long term investments, you should be careful about where you’re going to put your pension. Generating a stable future income means deciding between an investment portfolio that’s highly diversified and low risk, or one that involves a higher amount of risk when you’re younger, which then reduces as you approach retirement age.
7. Consider Foreign Stock Exposures
Again, diversification can mean that you can multiply your opportunities to produce a decent return on your investments. Being aware of foreign stock exposures and markets can be more challenging if you’re not aware of particular companies or markets, but shouldn’t be discounted.
8. Take the Time to do Your Research
While it’s impossible to work out a winning system for a market, you can benefit from regular research and being aware of dominant trends. Approaches like fundamental analysis can be worth exploring if you want to develop a systemic approach to how you organise your investments.
9. Keep on Top of Savings
Always try to maintain a foundation for savings to prevent taking unnecessary risks – this should either be a threshold that you’re not prepared to go under when investing your money, or should be a protected savings account derived from your investment profits.
10. Know Where to Turn to For Advice
There are many places where you can get advice on your investments; the most common course of action is to hire an independent financial advisor to look at your investments and provide assistance in minimising your risk. You should make sure that an independent advisor is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and that they subscribe to a Statement of Professional Standing and Ethics.