Showing posts with label Introduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Introduction. Show all posts

Friday, May 21, 2010

An Introduction To Investments

What is an Investment ?

An investment can be termed as an asset purchased for profit, whether via income, or capital appreciation ( estimate highly ), or some combination. The ( entity ) person making the investment is called an investor.

Investment has a (connotation ) meaning of a long-term holding period, in contrast ( set opposition and bring out the difference ) to speculation, which is the purchase of assets seeking profit from short-term price movements.

In practice, no precise definition distinguishes between investment and speculation. The expected return on investment, ( ROI ), is a measure of the attractiveness of an investment, whether anticipated ( foresee or expect ) or realized.

In economics, investment represents capital expenditure by companies in an economy or economic model. In this context, investment is distinct from consumer expenditure, government expenditure, and net exports.

The opposite of making an investment, or selling the asset, is termed as disinvestment.

Why to invest ?

Investing can be a good way to give your money a real chance to grow over the long term. If you put your money in a savings account, you’ll only earn the amount added by interest. With investing, you can put your money in a variety of assets, each with the potential to increase in value at a level higher than the current interest rate.

Remember the old saying “speculate to accumulate”? That’s very true of investing. You may need to take chances with your money to be in with a chance of getting a real return above the rate of inflation. You should be aware though, that investing does carry risks and you could lose some or all of your money.

But investments carry different levels of risk, so you can pitch your investment at a level that you’re comfortable with. Generally, the more you want to get back, the higher the risk to your original investment.

The key to investing is to make sure you spread the risk to your money by investing in a number of different assets. The chances are that if one asset isn’t performing all that well, another may be doing better than expected, which could offset the poor performance. If you’re not comfortable taking risks with your money, you might want to consider saving instead.
Unlike investing, with most savings accounts your money is generally safe, accessible and any interest added cannot be taken away.

Remember, investment values can go down as well as up and you might get back less than you paid in.