More than one way to skin this cat

Safe and boring or risky and stressful … whatever your approach to investing, there might be a better alternative

- Marcus Padley

We held an education day recently and one thing became clear: a lot of self-directed investors have become trapped by habit.

Sometimes you just need to stop and ask, “Am I doing the right thing?”. This article is for you.

There are a few ways to manage your own investments, depending on how much activity, passion and stress you are prepared to put in. Let me shed some light on your options.

There are many ways to skin this cat. Here they are, from safest to most risky.

OPTION ONE: The lowest risk – balanced investing. Just sit in “the market” all the time.

You can do that through a large industry fund or a retail fund. They can expose you to a very balanced (boring) investment mix that holds a number of asset classes and achieves the “average” return.

You do well in good years. You do badly in bad years.

The good news is that, thanks to their expensive websites developed over the past few years, you can now manipulate the mix of asset classes yourself, in some cases from your mobile phone.

The different mixtures of assets are called things like balanced, conservative, aggressive or cash, all of which are simply descriptions for different percentages in each asset class.