Sunday, March 16, 2008

Get Good Returns By Making Small Investments

When you are looking to make money in the shortest amount of time, and do not have a lot of money to do it with, you want to make small investments. Or, you may have a lot of money but are not yet familiar with the best investing techniques. A lot of profit can be gained from small investments as long as you follow some basic rules. Here are four of them for making small investments but getting great returns.

Take Time to Investigate

This should probably be your key factor when deciding where to invest your money. You do not want to jump too quickly into something until you are thoroughly satisfied that it is a good move. Some things that you will need to consider before you make that move are:

• What are the risks?
• What are the minimum and maximum possible results?
• What is the time frame for the desired results?
• Will this money be liquid later?

Answering some questions honestly may make you decide that it may not be that good of a move - or that it is an excellent move. A thorough investigation and a comparison with other possible investments will help you determine which one is the best one for you.

Know When to Jump

Experience will teach you when it is the best time to make your move. One thing that you don't want to do, however, is to repeatedly hesitate on moving when everything indicates that it would be a good investment.

Unless you are willing to depart with your money, make sure that you always have a margin of safety on your assets, or else you may lose it all. This may tend to make you more hesitant, but it will also lead to wiser investments.

Diversify Your Assets

Whatever your reason for looking for small investments, you want to be sure that you do not put all your eggs in one basket. The reason is that it is much safer to diversify your assets across several markets using different instruments and levels of risk, than to possibly lose it all in one bold but possibly misguided shot. This kind of investing is not worth the risk and it will most likely cost you everything.

Balance your assets with different types of investments into bonds for the safest investment, mutual funds for good investments, and various types of stock for your highest yields. The highest yield investments are also the least safe investments, however. Any money that you cannot afford to lose should never be invested in high-risk categories.

Choose the Greatest Profit

Whenever you may find that you have more than one option for making a good small investment and all other factors being about equal, you should go with the one that has the greatest profit margin. Short-term investments will also provide you with quick profits and enable you to use your money again in another great deal. Investments that prevent your money from being liquid for a long time may not be a good idea, when you consider that many profitable small investments could also be short-term.

Building Wealth On Small Investments

When you want to start building your wealth, it will probably need to be with small investments. This is a great way to get started in wealth building but just like with large investments, money can easily be lost. This means that you will need to investigate carefully what you are doing and how you are going to go about it. Here are some tips to help you to start building your wealth with small investments.

Develop A Strategy

Before you start to look for opportunities, you may want to divide up your available money into three or more segments. This will allow you to make more than one investment simultaneously, and it will give you other money, too, just in case the first investment should tie up your money for a longer period of time than you had thought. You could also use some of it for short-term investments, and other money for longer-term investments.

High Risk or Low Risk?

You will also need to decide what your risk factor is going to be for each segment of your money, too. For instance, you may use some of it for lower risk investments that will keep that portion of your money relatively safe. Another portion of your money could be used for high-risk investments, but you will need to be willing to possibly lose this money if you do. Other money may be designated for long term investments, and some just for short-term investments.

Look For Opportunities

Learn all you can about wealth building before you start investing in any kind of high-risk stock. You may even want to seek advice from a professional. Long term investments, which should be the money that you cannot afford to lose, you should invest in stable instruments like bonds, mutual funds, or CD's. These do provide a lower interest rate, but they are solid.

Investing in the stock market is an idea. Stay away from the high-risk stocks until you know what you are doing, or it could lead to quick losses. Once you are comfortable, you can expand your investments into the short-term more profitable stocks. Forex may be another option. Either one will not take a lot of money to get started, just be sure to shop around for brokers, since prices vary.

Alternative Investing

Instead of thinking only about the stock market or more traditional methods, don't forget about investing in things that will increase in value, as well. This usually includes assets that you can hold such as gold, coins, stamps, art, antiques, cars, and many more. Collections of various things, such as memorabilia of some kind, can also provide you with an investment of increasing value. If you need ideas for this type of investment, simply go to eBay and see what some of the high-ticket items are.

These items, as well as investing in new businesses, could provide you with relatively safe investments as long as they are protected. Some of them can also be sold easily for liquidity.