Investment Basics: Vehicles to Grow Your Wealth

Every journey starts with a single step, and the journey towards financial prosperity is no different.

Investing may seem like a complex web of decisions and evaluations, but understanding the basics can make it significantly less daunting. In this post, we aim to break down the fundamentals of investing on the types of vehicles and provide you with a stepping stone into the world of growing your wealth.

1. Why Invest?
2. Understanding Risk and Return
3. Types of Investment Vehicles
4. Conclusion

Why Invest?

Why should you invest? Why not just save? These are questions many of us ponder when starting our personal finance journey. The truth is, while saving is a secure way to protect your money, it doesn’t allow your money to work for you.

Investing, on the other hand, provides the opportunity for your money to grow, potentially outpacing inflation and increasing your overall wealth over time. It’s about planting seeds today that can bloom into significant assets in the future.

Understanding Risk and Return

The concepts of risk and return are foundational in investing. They’re two sides of the same coin. Higher potential returns often come with higher risk, while lower-risk investments usually offer modest returns.

The risk is the likelihood that an investment’s actual returns will differ from the expected returns. A neglected point: just as important as knowing the potential returns, understanding your own risk tolerance – the amount of risk you’re willing to take on – is crucial when choosing your investments. We wrote about this in the guide on retirement planning.

Return, on the other hand, is the gain or loss made from an investment over a period of time, typically expressed as a percentage. The potential for higher returns is one of the main reasons why people choose to invest their money.

We wrote this article to focus on the various types of investment vehicles so that it can supplement the timeless guide on retirement planning mentioned above.

Types of Investment Vehicles

There’s a multitude of investment vehicles available, each with its own set of characteristics, risks, and potential returns. You then pick vehicles based on the combination of characteristics that you are most comfortable with. As money is also a tool, you use different tools for different purposes.

Here are some common types with details on its characteristics:

1. Stocks: Stocks represent ownership in a company. As a shareholder, you stand to gain if the company does well, but you also bear the risk if the company underperforms. Stocks have the potential for high returns but come with higher risk compared to other investment vehicles.
   • Pros: High potential returns through capital appreciation from ownership in a company or potential dividend income
   • Cons: High risk, susceptible to market volatility, requires research and knowledge to choose the right companies
2. Bonds: Bonds are essentially loans that investors make to entities like governments or corporations. The borrower promises to repay the bond’s face value on a specific date and pays periodic interest to the bondholder.
   • Pros: Regular interest income, generally lower risk given that bonds have higher priorities to capital claims in a company bankruptcy
   • Cons: Lower potential returns, risk of principal loss when issuer defaults, interest rate risk (bond prices fall when interest rates rise).
3. Mutual Funds: Mutual funds pool money from multiple investors to invest in a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, or other assets.
   • Pros: Professional management, instant diversification, accessible to investors with small amounts of capital.
   • Cons: High fees and expenses, lack of control over the individual assets in the fund, historical underperformance of mutual funds to benchmarks.
4. ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds): ETFs are similar to mutual funds where they pool money from investors except that ETFs purchase the stocks of companies that are part of a market index. A market index is a list of large and key companies that represent a market. Famous examples are the country indices such as Dow Jones (one of USA’s oldest indices). They offer a convenient way to get diversification and can be more cost-effective.
   • Pros: Diversification, lower costs compared to mutual funds, trade like stocks on exchanges.
   • Cons: Market price may deviate from the underlying stock values, trading costs can add up if frequently buying and selling.
5. Real Estate: Investing in properties can provide income through rent and potential appreciation in property value over time.
   • Pros: Potential for both income and price appreciation, physical asset, can provide a hedge against inflation.
   • Cons: Requires significant capital, illiquid, can require significant time and effort to manage.
6. Retirement Accounts (401k, IRA, etc.): These accounts provide tax advantages for retirement savings and can include a variety of investment options.
   • Pros: Tax advantages, variety of investment options, promotes long-term savings habit.
   • Cons: Penalties for early withdrawal, annual contribution limits, investment choices can be limited based on the plan provider.
7. Options and Futures: These are derivatives that derive their value from underlying assets such as stocks. Options give you the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price within a specific time frame. Futures are similar, but they obligate you to buy or sell the asset.
   • Pros: High potential returns due to its characteristics of leverage, flexibility where complex strategies can be employed to earn in different situations, can be used for hedging other risks.
   • Cons: High risk with expiration dates, complex, not suitable for beginners.
8. Cryptocurrencies: Cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual currencies that use cryptographic security for a method of exchange or for other purposes. Bitcoin is the most well-known cryptocurrency with its base proposition of decentralized means of exchange, but there are thousands of others.
   • Pros: High potential returns, easy to buy and sell, offers some anonymity.
   • Cons: Highly volatile, risk of loss from hacking, regulatory risk.
9. Commodities: Commodities include physical assets like gold, oil, and agricultural products. Investors usually trade commodities using futures contracts.
   • Pros: Can act as a hedge against inflation and currency fluctuations, diversification.
   • Cons: Can be volatile, impacted by global economic and political events, futures trading is complex.
10. Index Funds: Index funds are a type of mutual fund or ETF designed to track a specific market index, such as the S&P 500.
    • Pros: Low fees, diversification, passive strategy mirrors the performance of the tracked index.
    • Cons: Limited to the performance of the index, no potential to outperform the market, lack of flexibility.
11. Foreign Currency Fixed Deposit: A sum of money deposited in a foreign currency for a fixed period of time. This is an attractive option for investors who expect the foreign currency to appreciate against their home currency. For instance, if you live in the U.S and believe that the Euro will strengthen against the Dollar, you could open a Euro fixed deposit.
    • Pros: Potential high returns where foreign currency fixed deposits often have higher interest rates and currency appreciation compared to domestic fixed deposits, diversification from home country’s economy
    • Cons: exchange rate risk, interest rate fluctuations, inflation risk, limited access to funds where like other fixed deposits, it lock your funds for a certain period

Conclusion

Remember, investing is a long-term endeavor. Patience, consistency, and a well-thought-out plan are your allies in achieving financial growth and security.

Investing is a significant part of your personal finance journey. Read the guide, consider the vehicles and act on it.

Discuss the above in our Facebook Group/Page.
Write in to us if you have any questions or feedback.
Subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates on guides and additional resources such as templates and trackers.