Property funds: Safe as houses?
Investors wishing to profit from property prices and rental yields don’t have to buy a house, when they can invest in property funds instead. Rather than heading to an estate agent, try an investment platform. You can snap up a stake in a property fund with much less money and hassle than buying a building.
Make your money travel: Explore developed, emerging & frontier markets
Diversification can sound pretty dreary, but one way to achieve it is to let your investment portfolio travel the world (ok, only metaphorically). By spreading your eggs across different geographical baskets, you can minimise overall portfolio risk at the same time as gaining access to a range of opportunities, including some niche and exciting ones. Some countries can be accessed directly, while others tend to come in a set. This is our introduction to regional investing.
Multi-asset funds: The ready meal approach to investing
Multi-asset funds do exactly what they say on the tin: they contain a combination of different assets. Someone else picks the assets so that you don’t have to, serving up diversification on a plate.
What’s so special about specialist funds?
Once you’ve decided on an asset allocation strategy that suits your plans and expectations, it is time to get more granular within each asset class. There are a number of ways to do this, for example last week, we wrote an introductory piece on Growth versus Value style investing. Another way to mix up your portfolio is to invest in specialist funds to express a particular view on the future direction of markets.
How to plan your asset allocation: Q&A with an expert
Choosing your asset allocation is one of the key decisions you make as an investor. Whether you want to go all in on equities or mix them up with some bonds and perhaps some property or alternatives is up to you. But we asked an expert, Gavin Haynes of Fairview Investing with decades of investment experience under his belt, to share his thoughts and advice.
An introduction to asset classes
One of the most important decisions in investing is deciding on which asset class(es) to invest in. How much you should have in each is an asset allocation decision, which is usually based on two main factors – your time horizon, and your appetite for volatility (which we discussed in our last post). We will dig into that in another post shortly, but first, let’s get to know the building blocks.
What is risk?
The word ‘risk’ is often bandied around in the world of investing. It’s a pretty alarming term, especially when mentioned in the same breath as your hard-earned savings. Yet other investors seem to carry on quite happily regardless. Are they just crazy adrenaline junkies or do they know something we don’t?