Ask HN: I have $450K cash, what should I do to maximize my return? - <AUTHOR> I recently came into some money and now I have $450K in cash burning a hole in my pocket.
I have about $50K in an index fund, own land worth $150K (paid off) and another $200K in industrial real estate investments.
Given this spread, what should I do with the cash? I'm not comfortable investing the entirety into an index fund, given the current socio-political climate.
I'm located in the Midwest, USA. <comment><USER4> Just skimming some of the replies here makes me think you will get better advice on the Bogleheads forum [1]. Despite the minimalist appearance it is actually a great place to get sensible financial advice. I would start with the wiki page on managing a windfall [2], then search through older replies to similar questions. This kind of question gets asked there a lot, so there should be some recent threads.

[1] [https://www.bogleheads.org/](https://www.bogleheads.org/) [2] [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Managing_a_windfall](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Managing_a_windfall)

<comment><USER5> Bear in mind Personal Finance is pretty conservative. Depending on how much time you have in the market you can take some more aggressive bets. I'm not suggesting r/WallStreetBets style investing but something like a risk parity adjusted pairing of 3X leveraged S&P with 3X leveraged treasuries can yield dramatically better returns over time [1]. I'm not recommending it per se, to each their own risk tolerance and research, but suggesting that if you have time in the market, consider being more aggressive.

I'd suggest something like this.

(1) Have 6 months of expenses set aside.

(2) Max out your tax-advantaged retirement accounts.

(3) Allocate some amount of capital to traditional or conservative investments, and some amount to more aggressive plays. The more time you have in the market, the more aggressive you can afford to be. Having both types of investments will give you the comfort you need during rough times that your riskier plays come through eventually.

(4) If you're looking at property, consider setting aside a down-payment. Keep in mind that if you're employed, buying a house in cash may not be the optimal strategy as you can deduct large quantities of your mortgage payments, giving you, with 20% down, a 5X leveraged investment in real-estate with deductible expenses and historically-low interest rates. Mortgage interest rates are just a hair over inflation, and when you deduct the interest from your taxes, you're actually saving money with a mortgage.

(5) Now that you have a large chunk of capital, you can consider financing some purchases yourself at extremely low rates by taking advantage of margin borrowing. InteractiveBrokers offer 1.5% interest margin loans, and you could, if within your risk tolerance, borrow some amount of money collateralized by your (safe) equity positions. This 1.5% interest is also tax-deductible. Obviously be careful, a margin call is something to avoid, but against a $450K portfolio, I personally wouldn't sweat borrowing $45K.

One thing I was able to do personally is borrow enough on margin to make a down-payment on a property. This allowed me to deduct the entire balance of my mortgage, beyond the $750K cap, and at 1.5% the margin interest is much lower than if I'd financed the whole thing.

[1] [https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=272007](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=272007)

<comment><USER6> Please stay away from leverage equity index funds.

[https://capitalallocatorspodcast.com/wp- content/uploads/2017...](https://capitalallocatorspodcast.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/The%20Surprising%20Cost%20of%20Volatility.pdf)

Edit: For more clarity - risk parity can make sense, but I don't think you ever need to use leverage on your equities to get risk parity. The fundamental insight of risk parity investing is that at commonly recommended ratios (50/50, 60/40) the risk (variance) from equities totally dominates the risk from bonds. So the risk parity advice is usually something with a much higher bond mix, but the entire portfolio is leveraged. But DO NOT use levered ETFs that recognize, say, 3x the DAILY movement of the S&P to do this. They don't do what you think. Read that link, or compute the following two scenarios:

1) Market goes up 1.1% on odd days, down 1% on even days. That yields about 9% (200 trading days). But a 3x daily etf product would only get you about 22%, not 27%.

2) Market foes up 1% on odd days, down 1.1% on even. That, sadly, means you lose about 11% on the year. If you use a 3x DAILY etf product, you lose around 75%.

<comment><USER5> Please read the write-up before replying with blanket statements that aren't relevant in this case :)

That issue is addressed in the bogleheads post explicitly ("How much does the leverage cost?" and "Don't you know that leveraged ETFs are only intended to be held for one day?"), basically the ETFs are risk parity adjusted, and the volatility in the ETFs actually what generates the returns. The strategy makes money from volatility, and the 3X leverage is used to add volatility in, exaggerating the returns.

I think you might find the post interesting because it seems like you are interested in investing. What you're saying is again explicitly addressed there, and factored into the calculation. They work an example of that kind of decay, and how it's mitigated. Specifically, it doesn't matter that you have volatility decay in one of the ETFs because they're uncorrelated, and when one goes up the other goes down, canceling out the effect.

Your blanket statement does not apply to this specific strategy. It's not wrong in general, but it's not relevant here.

If you don't want to read the bogleheads write-up it's also addressed on Seeking Alpha [1].

> "That, sadly, means you lose about 11% on the year."

Not if, as you see in the write-up, you pair it with an uncorrelated 3X leveraged asset and rebalance periodically.

The post includes a backtest to 1987.

[1] [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4308489-why-leveraged- etfs-...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4308489-why-leveraged-etfs-might- be-perfect-for-achieving-retirement)

<comment><USER7> I've been using 3x ETFs for the past few years to pursue a Permanent Portfolio style strategy in one account, and an All Weather strategy in another, rebalance annually, and both have been doing well.

Low net volatility, high returns. Backtesting of the strategy shows total returns just under 3x the return of the unleveraged portfolios, just what I expect given the leverage costs.

I expect both strategies to be both market-agnostic and age-agnostic. About as close to fire and forget as you can get.

<comment><USER8> The right advice is "don't use a leveraged fund unless you want to be involved and look at the market every day"

I've made good money on them as well, but I shuffle money in and out frequently.

It's not a good strategy unless you really want to study things.

<comment><USER5> That's true in general, but this strategy is basically set it and forget it (rebalance quarterly for best results), and it works because it's been carefully balanced to offset decay.

<comment><USER9> how do you offset the decay?

<comment><USER5> It's all in the post ("Don't you know that leveraged ETFs are only intended to be held for one day?" section) but there's something we need to clear up before we start.

(1) What people refer to as "decay" is just the way the the daily exposure works on these ETFs. To quote the article:

"Let's say over five days the daily returns of the index are +1%, -2%, +3%, -4%, +5%, and you start with $100."

"At the end of the five days your $100.00 becomes $102.76."

"Now let's use a 3X leveraged ETF. Ignoring ER and other costs, the daily returns are +3%, -6%, +9%, -12%, +15%."

"At the end of the five days your $100.00 becomes $106.80."

6.80 is not 3X 2.76, and it's because down days leave you with less exposure the following day, so you need a bigger up day than the preceding down day to make up for it. However, as the article points out, this dynamic works for you in ETFs that exhibit positive momentum. Since "stocks always go up" \-- at least the S&P always goes up over time, so far -- this dynamic works to your favor and the total return of UPRO to date has been _5X_ the return of SPY.

(2) UPRO and TMF are uncorrelated, and so the positive momentum of SPY causes UPRO performance to exceed 3X, and offset some of the lower-than-3X performance of TMF over time. For the record since 2017, the performance of TMF is 2X that of TLT, give or take.

(3) Further, the way this makes money is actually when the S&P drops 10%, UPRO drops 30%. As people flee assets, they buy treasuries, pushing TLT up 6-7%, which causes TMF to go up 20%. Then at rebalancing time, you sell TMF and use it to buy UPRO, so you sell the 3X winner, and buy the 3X loser at a deflated price. When prices normalize, the extra shares on the losing end in conjunction with positive momentum (and the fact you've reduced the size of your winner before it falls) put you much further ahead than if you weren't using leveraged ETFs.

This strategy makes money on volatility, and should be agnostic to market performance. It actually held up really well during March.

<comment><USER8> Part of what I do is something I'll call "pile of reserve" investing. I'll hold like $X in some leveraged fund but I have 50x in cash on the side so if things go south I can dollar average my way to profitability. This also requires constantly winnowing down profitable investments to insulate from risk. I've been doing this for about 3 years. About a 3x return on my current holdings, which is about 50% of the maximum I've had in.

This will very likely make less money but really, I can pay all my (admittedly very modest) bills with my portfolio and have returns left over + my actual day job income so honestly, why do I care?

I come from a privileged background and I lived that life. I didn't like it and have no interest in returning to it.

People have to find the strategy and mix that works for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _I 'm not comfortable investing the entirety into an index fund, given the > current socio-political climate._

Over the the long term there is not really anything better to do with it than equities: the Great Depression, World War 2, gold standard retirement, 1980s inflation, etc. Even if you only invested in the peaks, you'd still do quite well over the decades:

* [https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market...](https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/)

Jumping in with a lump sum amount can be quite daunting, so what you can do instead is put in (say) 40K every month over the course of a year or so:

* [https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...](https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/)

Certainly better than sitting in cash. If you're worried about volatility, then also invest in some bonds funds: 60% stocks, 40% bonds? If you want more growth, 70/30 or 80/20 maybe.

And while the S&P 500 gets a lot of the press, a total market fund is what Vanguard is steering their own employees to:

* [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bogle-explains-why-vanguar...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bogle-explains-why-vanguard-employees-wont-have-a-flagship-sp-500-fund-in-their-401k-2018-06-07)

See also:

* [https://www.pwlcapital.com/should-you-invest-in-the-sp-500-i...](https://www.pwlcapital.com/should-you-invest-in-the-sp-500-index/)

<comment><USER11> I'm an index fund skeptic. What would happen in a world where _everyone_ invested in index funds? Capital allocation would go haywire. You can't create value out of nothing. ISTM that the more people push on index funds, the more overvalued equities in the index become relative to those outside the index. I'm not sure that retrospective analysis saying index funds are the best applies going forward in a world where index funds are much more popular than they were in the past.

<comment><USER12> Not the op but I wish downvoters would comment giving their reasons. I remember seeing something about this in the atlantic a while back, and it would be good to know if/why it's a bad argument.

<comment><USER11> There's this weird social energy surrounding index funds that's very aggressive about preaching that they're the only viable option and that everything else is ridiculous. To be honest, this energy is another input that increases my skepticism of the whole thing. These days, whenever you see an argument downvoted instead of rebutted, there's likely something to it.

<comment><USER13> I think voting can mean different things to different people.

Some people upvote or downvote because they agree or disagree. They view it as a "vote" for the opinion.

Others upvote or downvote because they thing the argument is strong or weak, or maybe because someone said something nice and positive to another person or someone said something mean or hostile to another person.

I strongly favor the second approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Surprised not to see this mentioned anywhere. In finance, we don't look at maximizing total return but rather risk adjusted return. Buying a lotto ticket has amazing total return if you hit the jackpot but really bad risk adjusted return.

The thing you should spend some time doing is deciding what your risk tolerance is and how much variance in your portfolio you can stomach. Then you can start talking investment strategies.

<comment><USER15> Ok so say I have enough risk tolerance to put my money in something other than cash, but not more aggressive than a fund that tracks the S&P, what precise steps should I do to live off of my cash stack while doing absolutely 0 work other than sitting on my couch?

<comment><USER16> If it's all in the market, most wisdom says you can take out 4% a year and never run dry. Is 4% of your stash enough to live on? Congratulations you are financially independent. You can read through mr money mustache if you want more depth..

<comment><USER17> The current risk free rate is absurdly low, which would suggest a much lower sustainable draw down than 4% for the next 10-30 years, probably only around .5 to 1.5% at most.

<comment><USER18> That's rubbish that you think you can predict a 1% return in the market over the next couple decades. It would be extremely unprecedented, and you'd need a very solid argument to have any confidence at all in that prediction.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention SPY has a 1.75% dividend yield.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > ... I have $450K in cash burning a hole in my pocket.

First, the urge to put money somewhere could be a problem. Examine why you feel this way - closely. It could be you're letting emotions take over and that's rarely a good thing.

Second, you didn't mention debts. If you have any, you might look at the interest rate (including government freebies) and compare that to the most likely return you'll get. If your interest rate is higher than your expected return, paying off the debt wins.

Third, what kind of reserve fund do you have? If you don't have 3-6 months of expenses in a ready cash, consider creating an emergency fund.

Fourth, if you have not maximized contributions to tax-advantaged accounts, consider doing that. If your employer offers a match, really consider that.

Fifth, avoid the temptation to tell others about your windfall.

Sixth, has someone helped you who is now in need? Think hard about it. If so, consider helping them out.

Seventh, be sure you understand the tax implications of receiving the money. How much will you owe, if anything. Make sure that money is securely set aside.

Eighth, if everything else is taken care of, think about the lifestyle you want to lead. Do you have enough money now to retire? How attractive does that possibility sound? Taking that path means taking less risk with the money.

<comment><USER20> On debt, while the financial math and low interest rates usually favor carrying it, there is a certain spiritual liberty about not being beholden to it.

Much like having enough in savings that you don't have to fear a few months without a job drastically changes what you'll tolerate from an employer, not having the weight of debt, however advantageous leverage might be, does grant the ability to look at opportunities large and small without the "but ..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ever since John Bogle created the first index fund about 50 years ago, the advice of simply put your money in, don't try to time the market, and divide between an allocation of stocks and bonds based on your risk tolerance has performed far better than anything else. This includes periods where the market has been very over-inflated. If you had the worst possible timing and put your money in around the absolute peak before the 2008 recession, held throughout the crash, and left it in for a while, you would have more than doubled it a little over a decade later.

It may be hard to realize, especially at times like this when the market doesn't seem to reflect reality, but when investing on a long time frame the best advice is always simply to put your money in and to not try to time the market. On a long enough time frame, it will all come out in the wash.

The key, of course, is "on a long enough time frame". If you think there's a reasonable chance you might need the cash in two or five years, then you should either significantly reduce your exposure to equities like the S&P 500 or eliminate it entirely. The question then, of course, is what do you put your money into? Well, there are plenty of options. While the S&P 500 returns around 9% before inflation, you have a number of options that are lower returns, lower risk. For that, you have the entire spread from a savings account (1% right now) to short term Treasuries (2%ish right now) to various kinds of bonds. The simplest way to get, say, 50% of the reward for 50% of the risk is to have (for example) 50% in SPY and 50% in Treasuries.

Whatever you do, good luck, and I highly recommend the Bogleheads forum for good advice on any situation.

<comment><USER22> This has been true for the US markets till now but I am always scared to think of a scenario where they go the way of UK markets have done in the last decade. Look at one[1] of the FTSE 100's Index fund returns. They stand at 3.58% annualised, i.e your money is now 1.4x of the original amount. This is considering the fact that we are looking at returns from Aug 2010 levels when the FTSE index was already 20% down from the 2008 peak.

So the peaks I see now in Nasdaq actually look very scary to me. Anyway, I think if they decide to go ahead with equity, they should spread it out over a period.

[1] [https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/funds/snapshot/snapshot.asp...](https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/funds/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?id=F0GBR06I23&tab=1)

<comment><USER23> _> They stand at 3.58% annualised, i.e your money is now 1.4x of the original amount._

Do you have a typo?

<comment><USER24> Annualised so ten years of 3.58% increase, 1.0358^10 = 1.4215

<comment><USER23> Thanks! I had missed the reference to "decade" on initial reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Take a look at this comment from 'patio11 and response by 'mechanical_fish[0][1]. My investment strategy is remarkably close to what they've described (although I read/learned about it elsewhere - a really good friend). I still buy an odd stock in low single digits as a "token" \- if I like the company I should get some stocks - think PTON, TSLA, AMD, GOOG, AAPL etc. However vast majority of everything else is in blend of vanguard index funds.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10111454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10111454)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10114707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10114707)

</comment><comment><USER26> The answer is: nothing. At least nothing different than what was your strategy before that large sum of money entered your life. If I were you, I'd split up this sum in 10 or 20 chunks and mingle each part with the amount you invest monthly. The reasoning behind the split-up is that it's easy screw up when it comes to investment, so easing in rather than nose-diving prevents you from doing something stupid.

A last word of caution: maximized returns come with maximized risks

</comment><comment><USER27> If you decide to invest it (in an index fund, for example SPY or IWM), I am not seeing any downside to selling cash secured puts. For example, on SPY, you could sell a short 48-dte 30-delta put (strike $312 on Sept 18) for $616 premium. If it is assigned (SPY goes below $312 on Sept 18), you will get 100 shares of SPY for $31,200 but you are no worse off than if you had bought today and also you will have reduced your cost basis to $30,584. If SPY goes up, the shares will not be assigned; pocket the $616 premium and repeat the cycle. Repeat this loop until your entire $450k is invested. This also has the advantage of spreading out your purchases, and thus dollar cost averaging them. Just a thought... I welcome any criticism of this approach :-)

<comment><USER28> The only argument against this that I can think of is that the market could continue to go up and up, and your premium gain might be less than what you'd gain through regular DCAing or lump summing in.

<comment><USER27> Thanks and yes, that is a good point. However, given that SPY is already at or near an all-time high, it seems unlikely that it would continue to go up every month or two by the premium amount (which itself is pretty substantial due to high volatility currently).

However, one adjustment if you have a bullish outlook is to reduce the delta from 30 to 20 or 10. Premium would go up and assignment is more likely.

OP, do it and report back :-) Even if you don't have any options experience, I am sure any broker will be happy to give you level 4 options (or at least level 2 which is what you need for cash secured puts) if you deposit $450k capital!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This may be an interesting starting point:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/windfall](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/windfall)

<comment><USER30> Actually surprisingly solid advice, even though it's reddit.

Helps that the first sublink in there is bogleheads :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Don't take financial/tax advice from random internet people.

Go to a fee-only financial advisor something like this [https://www.feeonlynetwork.com](https://www.feeonlynetwork.com) in your state and take their advice that is a fiduciary. It will cost you a few hundred dollars but that is entirely worth it, we don't know your whole tax and risk situation.

</comment><comment><USER32> > I'm not comfortable investing the entirety into an index fund, given the > current socio-political climate.

The government is printing an awful lot of money right now.

Keeping your money in cash isn't a guaranteed return if inflation goes up significantly. You're much better having it in assets with intrinsic value. (Stocks, real estate, etc)

I would suggest investing the money over the course of a couple years into an index fund, probably S&P 500 or total market.

Even if you invest at the worst possible times (right before crashes) you'll come out way far ahead of leaving it in cash.

[https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst- market...](https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market- timer/)

<comment> crack-the-code > Even if you invest at the worst possible times (right before crashes) you'll > come out way far ahead of leaving it in cash.

I don't like this argument, because it seems to imply you would indefinitely leave it in cash. In this hypothetical situation, where a market crash is impending, and individual could invest at the bottom and make significantly higher returns than investing prior to the crash.

This of course goes without saying, "you can't time the market", but it's a bit dishonest to indicate that you can't beat the market here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The normal first question is "do you have near-term need for this money" which it sounds like your answer would be "No, this came to me and now I just need to invest it for a long time".

It sounds like your asset allocation is currently:

\- $50k "index fund" (S&P 500?) \- $150k land/home \- $200k industrial real estate \- $450k cash

I would suggest you start at Asset Allocation [1] and as an example read through the "Three Fund Portfolio" [2]. Before this cash, you were nearly 90% real estate. At the very least, you can outperform "cash at a bank" by at least keeping that $450k in a Vanguard or similar Prime Money Market Fund [3]. So as you think about what to do, take the 1.3% or so :).

[1] [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Asset_allocation](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Asset_allocation)

[2] [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three- fund_portfolio](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio)

[3] [https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual- funds/profile/performan...](https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual- funds/profile/performance/vmmxx)

</comment><comment><USER34> Without knowing more about you - age, health, goals, risk tolerance, other obligations, etc - it's all just random suggestions from the internet.

My random suggestion here is diversify in to a few different equities areas. US, international, etc. I mostly have a few 'general market' funds, but a couple that are focused on tech companies, and they've outpaced the general market over the last several years.

Keep some in cash - ally and others have around 1% return on cash. not great, but it's something. keep maybe $80k or so in there.

put some in general 'broad market' index funds - total market or S&P or something - maybe $150k in that.

find some international funds - put $80k in that.

pick a precious metals fund - put $40k in that. Alternative, take _some_ of that and put in to crypto if you've got an interest in that.

This would leave you with around $150k. Consider some more real estate - perhaps just land and let it appreciate, or a small house you can use as a rental, or more industrial. Or just hold that in cash for a bit longer while you wait and see what happens. You already have $200k in industrial real estate. If you're comfortable with that, and you're getting a return that from area, increase your exposure there.

Watch the investments - readjust portions to your comfort level - <USER2> every 3-6 months - as things change. Keeping cash will give you some cushion if there's a downturn, either to weather a storm, or give you some ability to throw a bit more in to a specific market.

There's no rule that says you have to put it all in one index fund right now. You're in a fortunate position, and can afford to take this slowly, and spend time learning more about these various instruments before blindly throwing in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Part of that learning can (and probably should) be meeting with a fee-only advisor who can review your situation in more detail and give you a more comprehensive set of recommendations more suited to those aspects we can't tell from your post (risk tolerance, life goals, etc).

<comment><USER35> If you do use a financial advisor, use one that charges hourly. The ones that charge a percentage win regardless of your outcome. I have been very unimpressed with their work when I have seen it in action. The flat fee ones are incentivized to give you less than what they would do in the same number of hours. Probably you can set up an initial allocation and learn about rebalancing, and you'll only occasionally need advice in the future.

Another good book to read is "A Random Walk Down Wall Street".

<comment><USER34> "use one that charges hourly" \- that's what I'd meant by "meeting with a fee- only advisor", but perhaps my term isn't the best phrase to keep in mind. yes, keep a fixed fee (hourly, whatever) - just don't tie a % of your portfolio as a fee for someone to 'manage' your money. Or... don't do it without careful consideration.

<comment><USER36> Where do you find them? I've been looking in my area and there are a few I've spoken with that don't seem to be in tune with 2020 or my personal philosophies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What's your goal? That's the first question that needs to be answered here before trying to identify an investment strategy.

<comment><USER38> Investment managers always ask this question and I never know what to answer. I feel like everyone's answer must be the same: maximize return, minimize risk.

What are possible answers to this question you're looking for?

<comment><USER39> You can't both minimise risk and maximise return. They're polar opposites. ("Risk" is a bad word for the concept. It's more about volatility. The more volatile the asset, the higher the fluctuations, and the less you can expect to still have tomorrow, but the more you'll have in 20 years.)

The expected answer is mainly about what risk you are able to tolerate, i.e. how soon you will need the money back again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Managing_a_windfall](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Managing_a_windfall)

Use this money to max out all tax advantaged accounts available to you (401k, IRA, HSA), and invest the rest in a brokerage account. When in doubt, invest the money in a target date fund at Vanguard or Fidelity that most closely matches the date you plan to start withdrawing from the account. A total world fund/ETF, like VT, is also a fine option.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd advise you to stay liquid for a sizeable fraction of that for the next 12-18 months. The world is changing rapidly and access to a sizeable chunk of cash could make all the difference once the smoke clears and it is clear what to do. Also: you could go bargain hunting.

</comment><comment><USER42> As someone who has been a partner in a fund in the past, I've done a solid amount of research, and for someone who is risk averse, one of the best strategies of the last 50 years has been 33% of your investment in real estate, 33% in hedge funds, and 33% in a portfolio balanced between stocks and bonds. I don't have the study on hand, and I also don't have the time to search for it, but doing research into the hedge fund field will probably yield this study. good luck

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a good resource: [https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)

Long term VTSAX or FZROX are probably good places to hold most of that. You could keep $30k in cash for emergency fund.

The other comments suggesting the bogleheads forums are also right. Most of the other comments are a total disaster I'd be cautious about following any of the advice here (it's also surprising to me how bad it is).

I also personally do some individual stock picks of companies I know in the field I'm in, but that's still quite risky and not advised unless you like this kind of thing (Amazon, Apple, PTON, Nvidia, previously tsla). I hold long term for capital gains.

Long term index funds are the best bet, even if the market goes down you can wait it out if you're young. If the current conditions scare you, you can "dollar cost average" entry which just means buying $X amount each month/week until you're fully invested. Long term this kind of thing doesn't matter though.

Are you looking to use the cash soon? If so you may want to not invest it. Being forced to withdraw is where the problems come from.

Don't listen to anyone on here about bitcoin. That's gambling, if you want to do that know it's gambling and expect to lose everything.

</comment><comment><USER44> Personally I would hold the cash until there is blood in the streets. That is the time that fortunes are made. We arent quite there yet, possibly next year.

In 2000 investors were screaming at buffet because he was sitting on billions in cash. They were saying he had lost his touch, he should pay a dividend etc.

Then in 2001 the crash happened and he was able to get some great deals.

The time to buy is when everyone else is saying dont buy, things have fundamentally changed.

<comment><USER45> > _We arent quite there yet, possibly next year_

The fact that a lot of people think this gives me confidence that it isn't going to happen anytime soon. I'll get nervous when the rhetoric is "The market is looking great for years to come!", like back in 2005/2006.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There's an amount of money you could plausibly need to avoid life consequences. You get laid off or your business fails, and you have to dip into savings to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.

Figure out how much that is, and leave it in cash or other extremely safe assets. This is a highly personalized number and it's hard to give good advice for it.

For the rest of your money, you now _know_ that you'll basically never need to sell it. The only thing that matters here is the total return over thirty-plus years. This is broadly-diversified stock index funds - the standard boglehead advice works great here. There's always a risk that today's stock price is the best you'll _ever_ see, so the historically superior plan for how to get money in the market is to just dump it all in and ignore the current price.

So yeah. Enough cash to make you "safe", rest in the stock market and ignore the current price and any price movements over the next three decades.

</comment><comment><USER47> Never take financial advice from internet

<comment><USER48> As opposed to, say, bankers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Wow no one asked if you have a partner or children or plan to. It isn't clear how old you are, what you want to do with your life, if you have a secure job, if you want to travel, if education is worth it, if you parents/family needs help or if you want to own your own business. Without these things any advice is probably wrong.

</comment><comment><USER50> "I have about $50K in an index fund, own land worth $150K (paid off) and another $200K in industrial real estate investments."

1\. I don't like Index funds. They were a great investment in the past. They may be a disaster in the future.

2\. "buy land they stopped making it" Mark Twain

3\. "industrial real estate" could be top, could be a disaster, depending on what "industrial" means. Technology heavy REIT (IT, server, g5 infrastructure) could be okay.

You could go contrarian and keep it cash. You could diversify in foreign currencies. In the end, HN is not the right place to ask. I just recently invested in some Asian utilities companies. They pay 5-10% divendends. Have a telecom investment that pays 45% dividends. No kidding.

One word of wisdom: Do not do VC investments. I sunk a ton of money there. In for a penny, in for a dime and it will start sucking a tremendous amount of time out of you.

<comment><USER51> "I don't like Index funds. They were a great investment in the past. They may be a disaster in the future."

Care to explain?

Are you worried about over-centralizing assets into index funds will screw with the market's ability to find the right prices for stocks?

Because I worry about that myself, but, then, what do you do? How do I possibly outsmart the market given the information problem?

<comment><USER52> I'm not sure of hify_hn's reasons why, but I've exited index funds recently due to:

\- the overweight holdings in tech in many of them.

\- those same tech companies are responsible for most of the growth in the past decade.

\- retail investors are chasing the tail of growth which is pumping the price out of realistic prices. many more have entered the arena with robinhood, etc.

\- there's too much cash being printed, feels like hyper inflation.

\- the current bubbles and shift in funds (pharma desperate plays, gold safe havens) make me think everyone has a finger on the "exit" button.

\- most every major indicator I see says a fall is near.

I'm no pro and this is only my opinion. Been doing this about 3 years with a mix of daytrade style plays (earnings, swings, cannabis bubbles, etc) that seed long term etf dca purchases.

I'm sitting on cash for now until near US election time. I think the robinhood retail passive crowd that's only recently started will be left holding the bag for the pros near election, much like the crypto newbies in that peak a while back who tried to get in at the top. Too many similarities of people that seem to have no basic understanding of how things work under the hood of things and just chasing a "really hot run in blackjack".

though I'm happy to admit I don't fully understand every nuance of ETF's I see/hear conversations with people clearly not understanding what they're getting into and it's just too similar to any bubble I've ever seen.

I've also considered it may just continue to go up and all this is unfounded and wont matter and I've accepted the possible loses of potentially new profit for the rest of this year. It's a cost I'm very happy to pay for peace of mind, and get back to my strategy when the world makes sense again.

In a nutshell it seems like the ETF has just become a raffle ticket that's being sold through making it easy to simply stick money into it without really looking at what you're buying and if it makes sense. Like the ETF is no longer an investment vehicle, but a product with a bunch of hype.

<comment><USER53> Overall, your post is more a critic on investment in this period rather than against index funds. Except for the presence of tech, which I'm not sure is this bad for people willing to take measured risk.

>there's too much cash being printed

Agreed, but then why hold on to cash until the election rather than buy gold or similar?

<comment><USER52> Sure, I totally plan to return to the index when it seems to make sense so you're right, it's only a bad investment (imo) right now.

I have other investments in web entities (think reddit style aggregation sites) in niches that tend to do well in downturns. They're pretty much a very small fixed cost for me every month (spot instances on AWS ftw) and can be cut off at any time. I feel safe holding cash (and its deflation) because the profit from those is no longer seeding indexes but being stacked on my cash pile. Ideally keeping my overall cash from deflating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Go out and get a copy of "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need" by Andrew Tobias. It's entertaining enough to keep you interested, fairly short and it's stood the test of time - first published in 1978 and updated a few times. You can read it easily in a weekend.

</comment><comment><USER55> This is my advice: make sure to spend enough time to educate yourself about financial investments. My rule of thumb is to spend one hour per $1,000 you have in assets.

So, with $450k in cash, dedicate 450 hours of the next 1-2 years to build a solid education for yourself. Don't simply follow the specific advice that you feel makes more sense.

If you think this is a lot of time... 104 weeks in 2 years = you need to spend ~4 hours per week to educate yourself. Read 2 hours for 2 evenings per week. That's it.

Too much? Ok, cut it in half. 225 hours in two years. Still a great effort that will pay you back for the rest of your life.

This is above any specific tactical move or decision you can make.

If you are not willing to do this, then accept the fact that whatever decision you will make, you will have a higher chance to regretting it.

<comment><USER56> Some education is good, but that much could result in paralysis by analysis. He'd be better off taking a relatively small chunk (say $25K) and learning by doing. Open a brokerage account and experiment with different investments.

Some people do not have the right "temperament" for investing. They're afraid to buy. Afraid to hold, so they sell too soon. They can't handle the volatility, so they get out at the first sign of trouble. It takes practice. Paper trading can help, but it doesn't get you the same feel as working with "real" money and markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Right now one should have a significant position in gold/metals for a couple of years to hedge governments severely inflating their currencies to fight the crisis/reduce their obligations.

Quality stocks and real estate, typically hold their value as well during volatile times. Do not panic during short term crashes. These should be bought on ten-year+ time frames.

As things improve over the next few years you can start selling the gold and buying other hard assets again. If approaching retirement, it will be time to start moving into more conservative income options like dividend-stocks, bonds, etc.

The one thing you don't want to do now is leave a bunch of cash sitting around. It will get hammered.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is a _big_ question that doesn't have a single answer, and might be the wrong question to ask. I recommend Bogleheads or buy an hour with a fee-based financial advisor.

</comment><comment><USER59> How about your return on happiness. Why not consider where you would want to spend your retirement and invest in making that place a reality. Forget ROI... think happiness.

<comment><USER60> Maybe they don't want to think about retirement now. They just want to invest the money and forget about the issue, and do now whatever they make them happy, which is not planning for retirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Don't feel bad about doing nothing. At some point the world will be more financially rational. You shouldn't have fear of missing out when things are so topsy turvy.

<comment><USER62> With investing you can always wait an year or two with the cash and think about it. However if you end up doing nothing with the money for 10 years, you will lose some serious purchasing power.

I would just put first everything to an index fund, then from there on try to find more interesting investing opportunities.

<comment><USER63> "Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves."

— Peter Lynch

<comment><USER64> Any evidence to back up the quote?

<comment><USER65> Scroll down to the table.[1]

[1][https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/04/11/what-happens- when-...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/04/11/what-happens-when-you- miss-the-best-days-in-the-st.aspx)

Basically, between 1998 and 2018, if you were out of the market during the best 10 days, you cut your return in half. And the more days out, the worse it gets.

Of course, this is artificial in the sense that you'd be pulling out one day, then back in 2 days later and doing it again and again, but the point stands, you can miss a week in the market and it can have _a huge impact on returns_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> It's a bit late in the cycle, but you can still make a few bucks in gold. As soon as your friends & family start talking about investing in gold, sell.

</comment><comment><USER67> Go through wiki and threads on [https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance).

You may also find interesting to read through [https://www.reddit.com/r/fatfire](https://www.reddit.com/r/fatfire) if you'd like this to be your starting point towards retiring.

</comment><comment><USER68> _Step 1_ : Choose a diversified equity index based on your time horizon and risk tolerance. You can also choose a mix of indices.

\- underlying principles: Diversification, reduction of exposure to idiosyncratic risk (as opposed to systematic risk), Modern Portfolio Theory

 _Step 2_ : Invest $8,653.85 a week for the next year in your indices of choice.

\- underlying strategy: dollar cost averaging

 _Step 3_ : If the market tanks in September because school re-openings ravage the country, invest the rest of your money at an accelerated rate.

 _Step 4_ : Continue to reinvest income steadily for the rest of your life. Never liquidate a diversified index because of a recession (this ruins the whole investing strategy).

 _Step 5_ : Gradually readjust your portfolio into lower risk indices before/during retirement based on your risk tolerance. Warning: Even if you have low risk tolerance, you must have a strategy to live off your earnings for the rest of your projected life span. Generally speaking, the lower your risk tolerance, the longer you have to wait before retiring (because bonds are guaranteed to provide low returns) or the larger your portfolio needs to be upon retirement.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm a big fan of boring. I like parking stuff in either Wealthfront or Vangaurd account, picking a diversified strategy, and leaving it alone.

</comment><comment><USER70> The markets are extremely overinflated as of now. We will see an adjustment by the middle of 2021 at the latest.

I would wait until the news starts to sound so horrible you can't help to do anything but invest.

As many have mentioned, placing it in an index fund is a good idea. I would go for that! But just wait until the market has the next downturn, invest, and don't look back.

<comment><USER71> > We will see an adjustment by the middle of 2021 at the latest.

I love people who claim they know what the market's going to do, and continuously call for a crash. These are the same people who have been calling for a crash for the last three years. Here's the deal, sure we eventually have corrections, but if you have cash on the sidelines then you just buy more and lower your dollar cost average. I did this pretty aggressively in March / April in peak market overreaction.

Just look at Apple and Amazon stock. Everybody was saying they were way overvalued and not to buy. What happens? Both of them absolutely crush earnings, and Apple the largest company in the world pops 10% in a single day on Friday.

<comment><USER42> You realize that this strategy isn't going to work indefinitely? People like you will be blown out in the future. Sorry if that sounds awful, but it always astounds me how people think investment managers are tantamount to tea leaf readers, and that they've figured it out by simple dollar cost averaging. I just don't understand the mindset

<comment><USER70> Clearly it won't work in the long term. No one knows what the market might do tomorrow. We might think we know but no one can ever truly know (legally speaking).

What I'm advocating for is mainly based on the timing: the market corrects, on average, every 8-12 years. Right now, many Robinhood investors (like you probably are) are extremely bullish and are inflating the market.

When the bubble pops I will see you at the bottom. And I damn well hope I am wrong.

Buckle up.

<comment><USER71> > People like you will be blown out in the future. > Right now, many Robinhood > investors (like you probably are)

First off, I am not a robinhood investor. I've been in the market since 2002, with a significant amount of capital invested now, weathered 2008 and this years Covid action and seen many bear markets. I find the fractional Robinhood "traders" comical and a train wreck waiting to happen. Buying Hertz, Kodak, Nikola.... That ain't me, so don't make assumptions. I have cash on hand, I have large percentage in J.P. Morgan ($JPST) a bond traded ETF which pays a monthly dividend and has a 8% return the last 3 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I have read all the comments here, and although the 8-12% per year returns you _might_ get from the stock market are tempting, my investment strategy has always paid off by at least doubling but usually tripling my money every 3 months... buy low and sell high. examples: buy a house in gated community or on the water on a tax auction or foreclosure auction offered by the court house and never bid higher than a third of the appraisal value on any deal, then sell it for what its worth on zillow. number two, buy jet airplanes or helicopters on auction sites and same thing never bid higher than a third. The reality of these auctions is once you bid higher than 50-100k, the small fish drop off and you either win or its a much smaller bidder pool. you're more than likely to win deals that are 5x to 10x cheaper than what they go for on the retail market.

</comment><comment><USER73> Get some land, plant trees and all sort of vegetables, and live there basically in this small heaven.

That's my plan at least

</comment><comment><USER74> Right now is a challenging time to invest.

In general I would lean towards well managed active funds versus pure index funds. The markets are in a time that a good active manager can get you some added return.

With that said I'd probably lean towards something like the all-weather portfolio. See:

[https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/all-weather- portf...](https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/all-weather-portfolio/)

Note: this portfolio does cost you some potential upside in good market conditions but with less down risk.

Disclaimer: I am a big fan of Ray Dalio who came up with the all weather portfolio. I have 7 figures in such a portfolio. For the equity and bond portion I use Vanguard active funds.

<comment><USER75> Ray Dalio has also said it's a foolish time to be holding bonds, of which the All Weather he came up with is 55%. A bit contradictory

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> The first rule of money is, "Don't lose it".

As to what to do with it? If interested in shares, a rule that I like is to invest in companies that make products that you like. Also, hopefully, you can make some assessment about the management of the company. If they are bringing a new product to the market, can you use your expertise to evaluate that product?

Michael Burry argues that Index Funds distort the market. Think lemmings. Better to use one's own judgement.

Is the sun always going to be shining? No, rainy days always come. In life, you will have both lucky and bad breaks. So make the most of your lucky ones.

And don't think you are a genius, when you make a lucky investment. Back to rule #1.

</comment><comment><USER77> If you want to get rich and are reasonably intelligent/motivated, the best investment you can make is in YOU. With that much money you have the freedom to not earn income whiling attempting to start a business or join a higher risk venture.

</comment><comment><USER78> Great to hear you are able to have these kinds of decisions to make!

Maximize return needs input * when do you plan to use the money? * what does maximize mean to you (more money is not always what people mean: Examples maximize social good, maximize for long term use in a trust, etc)? * what are your goals?

There are many other questions that could be asked.

Recommend you hire a fee only financial planner.

Also take a personal finance class to help you understand the different types of investments you have (cash, index funds, real estate, land, etc) and to learn how each type of investment is measured over time.

Hope you find your path to your goals :)

</comment><comment><USER79> Globally diversified low-cost index funds. Meaning not just US, S&P500 etc, but also Europe, developing markets, Nordics, «small cap» (ish) companies.

That's the portfolio I'm using, anyway. No currency hedging and slightly underweight (but not majorly so) wrt. the US.

Some US-based index fund strategies include only the US, but that leaves you less diversified. Though with better returns, historically.

Not sure why you're leaving index funds so underweight in your strategy; curious what options you're considering. There aren't a lot unless your strategy is more along the lines of wealth preservation.

</comment><comment><USER80> My advice is unconventional. Why maximize your return? Money is a renewable resource, but time is not.

If I were you, I'd spend the money to enjoy my time with others I care about and donate the rest to others in need.

<comment><USER81> Because managing the money wisely allows you to exchange less of it for more enjoyed time and more donation power, of course.

Your goal of using money to make you and other people feel good is not unconventional; the advice is unconventional because it's not an effective way to reach that goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Any answer here that includes the word bitcoin will be downvoted to oblivion, but it was the right answer 10 years ago and it is still the right answer today. Ignore and downvote at your peril!

<comment><USER83> If you want to secure your current wealth by saving, the fiat standard is not for you. Bitcoin is saving technology

<comment><USER28> So I have a Coinbase account and from all their free crypto promotions I have around $150 of Eth. I'd like to start adding some more to this to hold very long-term - is there a certain exchange or some other way you'd recommend, like Kraken or a hardware wallet?

<comment><USER83> Sure. If you have a serious amount of savings, the best approach to balance security and practicality is to protect your coins using multisignature, or multisig. [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> How old are you? What are your career and life goals? How much risk are you comfortable with?

Finally, keep im mind: "past performance is no indication of future returns." This is more and more true.

</comment><comment><USER85> Buy land in Portugal or Malta and leverage it to get a EU Passport.

<comment><USER86> Why do you need EU passport? Seems like unreasonable investment

<comment><USER87> +1

<comment><USER88> A US passport won't let you in right now?

<comment><USER86> Well, getting EU passport sounds like a long-term plan and investment. Current travel ban doesn't look like long-term. also, what's the reason of getting into EU? Is there more opportunity for investment? The vast majority EU countries the purchase power is lower than it is in US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I have always regretted investing spare cash while feeling a sense of self imposed time pressure. I would sit on it until there is an opportunity you are excited about.

</comment><comment><USER90> I recommend listening to [https://www.schiffradio.com](https://www.schiffradio.com) His guidance has really worked for me.

<comment><USER87> Thanks for that - I didn't know it exists!

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> This may be frowned upon but :

I am in a nearly identical situation, within a few percent of your dollar amount.

Ive been looking for a while for a partner for a lifestyle business, something along the lines of a maker space but open to a wide variety of ideas, most of them somehow variations on buying a large commercial space cash and using the free rent to build a business that creates community.

Me email is in my profile, feel free to get in touch, if you'd be interested in brainstorming.

<comment><USER92> I'm currently starting a new maker space in Texas, please feel free to reach out, happy to share what we know and have learned.

<comment><USER91> Thanks! Sent you an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Hire a good CPA they'll be able to execute strategies to reduce your tax burden and shelter the amount you pay on what it is earning you with what you do decide.

</comment><comment><USER87> Buy oceanfront real estate in Panama and rent it out.

Residency comes with this.

You may use both if things in USA gets from bad to worse - from political, economical, financial and social aspects.

<comment><USER94> If the USA destabilizes, the last place I want to be is Central America.

<comment><USER87> Share your ideas then.

Panamá gets stable revenue from Panama Canal plus some natural resources and operates in US dollars in eastern timezone.

As a plan B it's not exactly that bad.

<comment><USER95> Your advice only works if one speaks fluent Spanish and is well versed in and comfortable with the way societies work in Latin America.

For anyone else it is a recipe for disaster (as in being taken advantage of many times over)

<comment><USER87> I don't speak Spanish and I own condo in Panama and I renting it out and I live in USA.

So I'm walking my talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> If you're against a broad market index fund right now (which I think is fair, not so much because of the socio-political climate, but because of the high implied valuations of the companies within it), I'd recommend putting about all of it in Berkshire Hathaway as a set-it-and-forget-it type thing. It's effectively a cheaper index fund with better-than-average companies.

Why in the world would I recommend a single stock? For one, Berkshire is a "financial fortress" with virtually no debt, $100B+ in cash, and about a collection of dozens of wholly owned subsidiaries: GEICO, See's Candy, BH Energy, BNSF Railway, etc. Berkshire's so conservative that, although Buffett and Munger have acknowledged leverage could boost their returns, they refuse to take on obligations that would even create a 1 out of 100 year risk of failure. More importantly, I believe it's cheap at current prices (a little under $200 for each class B share). When you buy Berkshire, which has a market cap of ~$500B, you're getting $175B worth of stock $125B in cash, and the all the subsidiaries for $200B. And I'd bet the intrinsic value of those subsidiaries exceeds $200B by a substantial factor.

Risks: (1) The biggest problem is that Berkshire is already quite big. That makes it difficult to compound capital at large rates. But compared to the S&P 500 or the even-bigger tech companies, I'd rather be buying Berkshire, at least at today's prices. (2) Buffett and Munger's advanced age. This to me is not as huge of a problem as people make it out to be. Todd Combs (GEICO), Ted Weschler (investment manager), Greg Abel (non-insurance ops), and Ajit Jain (insurance ops) are extraordinarily talented... to say nothing about the leadership in the subsidiaries. And Berkshire's built such that it would be a great business even without these top-notch managers. (3) Time. This isn't a problem if you're happy to hold Berkshire for 20+ years. But markets are emotional beasts and stock prices can decline rapidly and unpredictably. Berkshire isn't a bond nor does it pay a dividend. So don't buy Berkshire if there's a risk that, 5 years from now, you'll need to sell or if you're the kind of person who can't deal emotionally with large short-term declines in stock prices.

Disclaimer: NOT investment advice. Just my personal opinion. I've been buying up more and more Berkshire in the past few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER97> Just as some general advice, imo that's enough money to visit with a fee-only financial advisor for some planning. I don't think my numbers are wildly off for location but you could probably spend like a grand (.22%) to get a solid plan in place that you can ride for a while. Or like others have said, roboadvisor. I don't think target date fund makes sense outside of a retirement vehicle but maybe that's an option.

</comment><comment><USER98> You don't say much about how much time you want to spend managing your investments. That is an important consideration. On one end of the spectrum, you may have several hours per day to track your portfolio along with market indicators and news -- On the other end, you may not be qualified, or have the time to spend.

No investment advice offered here will be worth anything until you decide where you are on that spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER99> So $450K is both a lot of money and not a lot of money. Yes you could maybe buy a house with it, but with the current economic climate of foreclosures just over the horizon, I would probably wait for the market to bottom out to do it.

If it were me, I would start looking for vacation properties which are selling as a steal. Then when the real estate market recovers, sell it. And enjoy the wealth that comes with it.

<comment><USER100> Not sure if you've been following the vacation rental market, but it's exploding right now. At least that's the case in the northwest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Since you're looking to maximize return, not risk-adjusted return, you should buy Bitcoin and roll deep OTM weekly put options on large cap ETFs.

</comment><comment><USER102> > Given this spread, what should I do with the cash?

There isn't a single answer.

Depends on factors such as:

\- your goals (e.g. would this be for future retirement, for paying your kids' education, etc.)

\- your age

\- your risk tolerance

\- etc.

What about the socio-political climate makes your risk averse to investing into an index fund? And are you referring to all index fund, which can vary on many dimensions such as region, cap size, type (e.g. equity, bond), etc.

</comment><comment><USER103> Real estate. Great hedge against long term inflation. And a mortgage allows you to borrow 5X at low interest rates, with rental yields generating a profit. Example: you can borrow 2M at 2% (interest only) and rent out at 3%. Real estate rising 3% on average means a capital gain of 70K a year, which is a 16% yield on your 450K investment.

<comment><USER104> the problem with real estate is that it's work. Even if you hire a management company (which does hit your profit), shit like bad tenants can really screw you up, if only in term of time spent on paperwork and legal garbage. In the best case scenario it's low (but not zero) work, but in the worse case it's a LOT of work.

<comment><USER105> Get LEGAL Indian immigrants as tenants. Especially the ones with tech related jobs. We always pay our rent. We dont want bad credit. We keep things normal.

<comment><USER104> The rent's the easy part. It's what happens to the apartment, neighbor complains, etc that matters (and race doesn't really matter for this, everyone's capable to be assholes in their own way).

Plus picking tenants based on race is quite illegal.

<comment><USER105> Agreed. Apologies if offended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Knowing very little of your goals, risk tolerance etc I'd say start with [https://rparetf.com/rpar](https://rparetf.com/rpar) . You can always exit it and do another strategy if you find more tailored advice

Else consider one of the Vanguard TargetDate funds if you have a target date to retire.

</comment><comment><USER107> Figured this would be as good a place as any to plug this retirement planner I wrote a while back: [https://lunchmodel.com/retirement](https://lunchmodel.com/retirement)

It's probably a little complicated for a layman, but I think it works pretty well, and is quite flexible.

</comment><comment><USER108> I'll just leave this bit of advice

Very few fortunes are lost by spending or excesses, they are mostly lost by bad investments and bad financial decisions

* It might be better to take your time and think long and hard before making any investment decisions

We are at a point of unbelievably crazy valuations and in the midst of a global pandemic

a lot of stuff is going to go tits up

</comment><comment><USER109> Since people are handing out general investment advice, is it possible to invest in a country? e.g., if I think Central African Republic is going to be the next South Korea over the next 20 years, how would you invest to reflect that without just investing in a specific business operating in CAR?

<comment><USER110> I imagine there are ETFs for this purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> I am in a similar situation. I ended up investing overseas on a good real state deal with high yields. The tax side of things was simplified by the type of investment (debt investment). I think the pandemic created or accelerated a bunch of business opportunities, some of them out of the US.

</comment><comment><USER112> Question, out of curiosity - How do founders manage those troves of cash after selling their startups for billions (sometimes even in cash)? I'm aware the amount is a mix of cash and stocks paid over 3,4 years. But, in some transactions the cash portion is not less than ~$300M.

</comment><comment><USER113> In your position I would save 90% on the safest type of account you can get (big bank, insured). The remaining 10% I would spend trying to bootstrap some business. There's a big chance of failing, but if you fail you will still have a nice amount to reboot.

</comment><comment><USER114> If you have spare time in your life, go to your banker, ask for 450k loan, buy 2-3 houses, keep 200k cash, rent the houses, if stock markets loose 50% of its value, invest 100k on sp500 index.

There is almost nothing that can beat renting houses if you are a non finance expert

</comment><comment><USER115> My advice: take advice from people who have invested that kind of money before, and no one else.

</comment><comment><USER116> Wait for the next crash and then buy up stocks and rental properties (apartment buildings) at a discount. See 2008 for reference. While you are waiting for the crash, you could put some of your cash into gold, which will do well when the US economy crashes.

<comment><USER110> I did that from 2008 to 2014 (but I didn't buy gold).

It worked out terribly. I should have parked it in a diversified portfolio. Instead, housing and equity prices inflated, and I lost a ton of potential gains.

Buying gold during the crisis would have made it even worse:

[https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold- prices-100-...](https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold- prices-100-year-chart)

If you must buy gold, it's best to buy some when the stock market is booming. If you bought gold in 2011 or 1980, your current return would be 0%. It would have been very negative last year.

<comment><USER116> I don't follow. My advice is that OP sit on their cash until the next crash happens. Then they should buy up stock and rental property. Before the crash, if they don't want to keep everything in cash, they could buy some gold which tends to increase in value right after a crash. The crash that started in 2008 bottomed out in March 2009 when the DJI fell to 7000. That would have been the time to buy stocks. By Nov. 2013 the DJI was up to about 14,000. As for gold, it was at $864/oz around Sept. 2008 which was a few months before the crash. By August 2011, gold was at $1819/oz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> I'll give you a proper Hacker News answer:

Invest it in software companies who develop in Haskell and Rust.

<comment><USER75> Haskell, eh. But companies using Rust are generally quite innovative and posed to do well in the next decade: Facebook, Dropbox, 10x Genomics, Cloudflare, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> In my circle a lot of people just use robo-advisors (wellfront, betterment, etc.)

The whole point is that it doesn't cost much and it saves you time on learning about finance.

If you are interested in learning finance, then of course this might not be the best approach.

</comment><comment><USER119> I can recommended keep investing what you understand best. Trying to invest in something you don't understand is one way to minimize returns.

Another advise is to go long in the investment with some risk spreading according to your tolerance.

</comment><comment><USER120> 'land worth' is absolutely not 'cash', it's way less liquid, and 'cash' means ~'immediately' available liquid money.

I wouldn't call the REIT cash either, but maybe that's more debatable.

</comment><comment><USER121> Find a good financial advisor that can tech you all you need to know to figure out what to do here.

Looking at where you have the money there is no rush to figure anything out. It's invested pretty well. Well enough to give you time.

</comment><comment><USER122> Are you looking for financial return only? If not [https://www.givewell.org/](https://www.givewell.org/) searches for charities that improve lives most per dollar.

</comment><comment><USER123> I'm going to bet that there are tips at the bottom of this thread that actually work and were written by someone who has made a lot of money off it, but it's hard to sift through them and find out what works.

</comment><comment><USER124> A nearly even allocation between: SPY, GLD, TLT, HYG, VXX (or equivalent sector standins) Has a very good very stable yield for many, many decades.

To have anything better, one must learn a lot about investing and keep after it.

<comment><USER125> Warning: VXX is virtually guaranteed to drop in price in the long run. It uses periodic reverse spits to maintain its price. Never buy and hold it, ever.

<comment><USER126> [https://stocknews.com/what-happens-next-after-vxx- expiration...](https://stocknews.com/what-happens-next-after-vxx- expiration-2019-01/)

"Indeed, in the initial prospectus from 2009 stated, "due to the construction for this product one needs to be aware that its value will approach zero over time." The prospectus also called to retire the fund after 10 years which will be at the end of this month on January 30."

"All told since its inception 10 years ago, on a split-adjusted basis, the VXX has declined from $120,700 to the current $47 level."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> Don't worry about maximizing your return. Worry about frittering it away. Do you already have the habits to be frugal-ish and control costs, or do you start spending more when you have more in your pocket?

</comment><comment><USER128> Call Vanguard, setup a Personal Advisor account, and let them do their thing.

</comment><comment><USER129> Money printer go brrrr, means invest in housing. It's the only investment that gives you 500k of tax free profit.

Also, you know your city, the local market and what the possibilities are much deeper than any corporation.

</comment><comment><USER130> I recently bought muni bond funds and SLV to hedge on inflation. PMO pays a nearly 5% dividend which is tax free. I'll take that over a 1% savings account (with taxes) any day.

<comment><USER131> AMZN has made a 75% return this year, and you're buying municipal bonds ?

Someone is _really_ risk adverse ...

<comment><USER130> key word, recently. As in, within a week. I realized a nearly 80% gain on my AMZN shares, and 50% on MDB shares, and a bunch of other wins as I managed to call the bottom of the V pretty well.

However, with the nasdaq fully recovered, yes I am realizing some gains and taking a more defensive position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER132> Buy Bitcoin. You can do so with paypal here [https://emeraldledger.com/buybitcoin](https://emeraldledger.com/buybitcoin)

</comment><comment><USER133> Personally I would put half in foreign stocks (like EFA etf) and half in gold. The dollar is dropping against foreign currencies and they are all dropping against gold. Every central bank is printing money like there is no tomorrow: with good reason we are in the midst of a deflationary shock.

But couple the money printing with record low interest rates (and negative interest rates), this creates a special situation where gold (and other hard currency like bitcoin) outperforms. With a negative real rate on bonds, you will lose inflation adjusted purchasing power in bonds even if you come out positive. There are not a lot of great options right now.

</comment><comment><USER134> You can develop something on that land. Or, go for some more real estate (maybe get some multifamily), but leave ample reserves given the climate.

</comment><comment><USER135> Life is short, make sure to leave room to enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER136> Invest in yourself, that money could buy 45000 books (assuming 10$ each) and after reading them all you could even be a billionaire

</comment><comment><USER137> Look in to opportunities for syndicated real estate investing.

You could also pursue investing in multifamily homes given you live in the Midwest.

</comment><comment><USER138> Since you have $750K in assets, you could consider investing in a social enterprise or giving to charity. I support GiveDirectly because their model -- direct cash transfers -- is very efficient.

Otherwise, as other people have said, it depends on your time frame and the amount of risk you are willing to take on. If you can wait 5+ years, a fund blending index tracking with some bonds (for stability) is an excellent option.

<comment><USER139> > _consider investing in a social enterprise or giving to charity_

You could even set up your own private foundation for serving a good cause dear to your heart.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatefoundation.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatefoundation.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER140> 5-10% of your total into BTC and ETH, 1-3% into smaller but high potential projects like LINK, MKR, KNC, etc.

</comment><comment><USER141> If you are interested in investing in a chatbot app targeting middle east and LATAM, please let me know.

</comment><comment><USER142> I would sit on it until the situation gets more clear, good deals should be coming and cash is king

</comment><comment><USER143> Wait 6 months for the market to crash. Then buy things like Coke, McDonalds, etc.

</comment><comment><USER144> What can you do, what do you know? If there were a clever answer that fits everybody, all the banks would already have poured all available money into it.

You maximize your returns by beating the market. You beat the market by being more clever than the market. Where do you have the resources to beat the market?

</comment><comment><USER145> I know a great financial advisor in the Dakotas if you'd like a referral.

</comment><comment><USER146> if you are trying to maximize returns, i would say crypto. you could have doubled your money in ethereum in the last few months.

if you are maximizing stability, probably guaranteed return products around 2-3%

</comment><comment><USER147> Red, go for red! (Unless it's a tuesday - then definitely black!)

</comment><comment><USER83> Dollar cost average into Bitcoin with swan swanbitcoin.com/swym

</comment><comment><USER148> Use it as down payment for three condos in Austin TX and rent them.

<comment><USER149> I thought about doing rental properties and then came to the conclusion that the amount of work to make that happen, just isn't worth it for the average person. You're either stuck hiring some management firm or doing it yourself. It isn't easy to get the capital back and will take years to see any sort of returns.

Never mind the fact that we're in a pandemic where ~1.4M people a week are losing their job. Who are you going to rent to?

<comment><USER150> It may also mean there are desperate landlords looking to sell. If you can deal with reduced/no rent for a year, there might be some great bargains maybe?

<comment><USER149> That seems like an increase in risk disproportional to the return on investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER151> The most secure thing you can do with that money is buy gold/silver and pay to have it stored in a secure vault. Honestly, that is more secure than keeping dollars in a bank account or US treasuries. Also, gold/silver are appreciating.

<comment><USER45> Gold/Silver prices are sky high right now, not a good time to buy them. Not to mention buying physical metals involves high transaction costs, which is frustrating. Precious metals are safe investments, but wouldn't expect them to appreciate much more in the near term.

Also, money in a US bank account is FDIC insured (up to $250k or something), how is that not secure?

</comment></comment><comment><USER152> consider watching www.tastytrade.com. They advocate self directed investing using options. My wife and I live in the midwest as well and we like the approach.

</comment><comment><USER153> My allocation

      20 % in physical gold
      10 % in Bitcoin
      10 % in gold mining stock
      30 % in cash
      30 % reserved for the coming stock market crash (to pick up cheap blue chip stocks)

Source: gut feeling

</comment><comment><USER154> Buy a house, live in it.

Your return = time to do what you want.

</comment><comment><USER155> OOC what is industrial real estate investment?

</comment><comment><USER156> I'm not sure where you should put it, but with 150k land + 200k industrial real estate, you should definitely not put anymore into real estate.

</comment><comment><USER157> I'd put $100k in bitcoin, $100k in large cap tech stocks, and keep $250k in cash in the highest interest bearing FDIC account you can find.

</comment><comment><USER158> I'll handle it for you.

</comment><comment><USER159> Buy gold

</comment><comment><USER160> put every last penny into bitcoin, and I'm not kidding

</comment><comment><USER161> Put it all in TSLA. By some accounts, predicted to reach $3,000 per share.

</comment><comment><USER162> YOLO Tesla call options - Pretty obvious. Or Kodak, both great companies.

</comment><comment><USER163> Start putting $10k/year into Series I bonds as inflation protection.

</comment><comment><USER164> Buy Bitcoin (BTC).

</comment><comment><USER165> Investing is a very specific and esoteric skill.

</comment><comment><USER166> 20% Stocks

20% Bonds

20% Real Estate

20% Cash

20% Bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER167> r/wallstreetbets

</comment><comment><USER168> buy gold

</comment><comment><USER45> #1: go buy those night vision goggles you've always wanted and take a vacation. Life is short and you should have some fun. Once that's done, do the below:

Expect inflation over the next 10 years, so keep the land & real estate investments (good hedge against inflation). Also, there are strategic ways to use these for tax purposes...talk to a good tax lawyer.

Treat 10% as "gambling" money with investments. Try to pick some stock market sleepers.

Spread 60% across a few American Funds and/or Vanguard selections, depending on your risk tolerance. Also, max out a Roth IRA every year starting now.

Keep 7-10% in a savings account that's accessible for emergencies.

Put 7-10% into bond funds.

Take whatever's left and put into a down payment on more real estate, either for a personal property or investment property.

</comment><comment><USER169> This is a really complicated question and nobody in this forum is qualified, nor is it even legally permissible, to give you such feedback. You should seek out a financial advisor.

</comment><comment><USER170> Invest in structured investments, the same ones used to buoy annuities. All the upside, less risk overall than most investments.

</comment><comment><USER171> I'm not seeing many replies that take into account we are in the m̶i̶d̶d̶l̶e̶ beginning of a pandemic which is what was asked.

</comment><comment><USER172> Hookers and blow

</comment><comment><USER173> Bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER174> Bitcoin or a 10x moonshot.

More real estate.

Gold.

Various index funds.

</comment><comment><USER175> QQQ all the way.

</comment><comment><USER94> The hottest investment in the next year I think is going to be secluded properties away from large cities, especially if they come with fiber internet (think Montana, Idaho).

</comment><comment><USER176> All in chainlink

<comment><USER177> I enjoy how /biz/ and HN mixes together.

<comment><USER176> This was the most /biz/ ask hn ever in fairness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER178> my hot stock tips free of charge $NXRT $VVNT $ALRM $NVDA

</comment><comment><USER179> Make sure you have a store of value in your asset allocation (gold, silver or Bitcoin) to hedge for inflation.

<comment><USER41> One of these is not like the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER180> Buy QQQ [https://www.google.com/search?q=QQQ](https://www.google.com/search?q=QQQ)

</comment><comment><USER181> If you seek out average advice, expect average results.

You are going to get a bunch of people talking about equities, Bogleheads, bla bla bla. Read the book "Expected Returns" and start pulling threads.

<comment><USER150> The best thing about average advice is that the results are pretty much guaranteed. Someone who's asking a question like this lacks the skill to differentiate between better-than-average and worse-than-average advice. So giving them average advice with nearly-guaranteed average results is doing them a great service.

<comment><USER181> Not if average results means they will lose their money, which is what usually happens to people who invest money without understanding enough to manage it themselves.

If you want advice about money listen to rich people not middle class people who read investing forums and get rattled when the stock market drops.

<comment><USER150> I think we have different ideas of what "average" advice is. People on Bogleheads don't get rattled when the market drops - they buy more aggressively.

Listening to people who got rich starting their own business, or making shrewd investments isn't useful for most people. That approach is hard to replicate and has far more risk. Someone who ground their way to financial independence with disciplined, diligent, and patient investing is a more approachable and realistic role model for a middle-class person.

Once they have a solid financial base, they can always try starting a business or making some other bet to try and launch themselves into the ranks of the truly rich.

Outsized wealth is a combination of hard work, good decisions _and_ good fortune. But people (understandably) tend to minimize that last factor. So even if a middle-class person takes a rich mentor's advice to heart and does everything right, they may not see the same results. Whereas index-based investing is a time and numbers game; luck doesn't come into it.

<comment><USER181> Saying that index based investing doesn't involve luck is exactly what I was getting at by the usual advice. Unfortunately, buying index funds, particularly US stock market index funds, is a matter of investing based upon selection bias. On the long timelines demanded by index investing, staking your claim on the US equities market is hugely risky, particularly when you are doing so without an investment thesis that can guide you if your assumptions change. Ask yourself if there is any condition where you would deallocate from stocks. If the answer is no, you shouldn't be investing - <USER3> are just parking money somewhere based upon hope, not an investment thesis. It's just high class gambling. The real adjusted return of the US equities indexes is far from certain, and trusting your financial future to them is at best a gamble, at worst a reckless decision.

Instead of buying dumb index funds, at the very least one ought to learn about the well studied areas of return drivers and diversify against those. The bogleheads who invest based upon simplistic ideas like low fees, asset (not return driver) diversification, and buy and hold in order to drive compound returns are giving advice (imo) akin to giving "common sense" advice from 50 years ago because it feels right. The reality is half or more of that common sense advice was proven idiotic 50 years later, and those who followed it without the ability to adapt to the changing world ended up paying a worse price than being wrong in the first place.

<comment><USER150> > Ask yourself if there is any condition where you would deallocate from > stocks.

It's reasonable to deallocate from individual stocks, or to sell to reallocate to other investments and keep to your plan. Deallocating from the stock market entirely, long-term is a much stronger position to take. There would need seismic shifts in the global economy to do that, because it's like admitting that on aggregate companies aren't going to make money anymore, right?

> staking your claim on the US equities market is hugely risky

I don't believe I ever said you should invest solely in the US equities market. There's also REITs, ex-US developed markets, bond markets, emerging markets.

> The reality is half or more of that common sense advice was proven idiotic > 50 years later

Can you share sources, please? I'd love to learn more.

<comment><USER181> Jackass Investing and Millionaire Fastlane are good layman books. Expected Returns is a more advanced but accessible one. Also the Missing Risk Premium is good food for thought since if its thesis is correct nearly everything you read about risk management in typical indexing investing literature is bogus and the opposite of true.

Tl;dr is two much more sane approaches to investing are return driver focused or income generation focused capital allocation instead of asset appreciation and compounding based upon speculative indexing. These btw are what rich people do with their money (hedge funds, managed futures, income generating investments) not park it in index funds and hope the underlyings appreciate due to asset prices going up. Rich people pay 2/20 management fees because the fees pay for true diversification. Diversification is real but requires diversifying return drivers not asset classes. (Asset price changes are just one return driver.) If you are just sitting in asset backed index funds there are a variety of tail events (non-apocalyptic ones) where their action correlation goes to one and you're perma-in the red until you die.

<comment><USER150> Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER182> We're currently printing, and will be printing more money. This is not investing advice. I'd put it in crypto or gold, or foreign stocks which are not undermining their dollar.

<comment><USER182> Where are my down voters now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER183> Take $200k and build out an equal weight portfolio of a bunch of different tech stocks. Take $160k and use as a downpayment on two different turnkey rental properties. Invest the remaining $90k in a decent index or mutual fund, different from the one you already have.

</comment><comment><USER184> Surprised I'm the first person to mention Ethereum. And by the amount of people bashing Bitcoin. I suspect those are mainly emotional responses by people who are unhappy they knew about cryptocurrency for years and missed out on profits. In my opinion it's foolish to not dedicate at least 5-10% of a portfolio to high risk assets.

</comment><comment><USER185> Maximise what return? Money? Gratitude? Ego?

\- If you'd like to make a dent into ones life, help someone out with a low income to achieve their goals. Like paying for a drivers license or buying a okay car so mom can bring her kid to school. With that kind of money you can help a lot of people. \- If you want to use money to feel safe, put some money on therapy, to know you never needed it in the first place and to get to know yourself. Buy a piece of land for everyone to live on your family and friends. \- Ego? Spend it on cars? Parties, everything that was unreachable and plaster your confidence. \- Want more money? Invest it in arms, wind energy, or start your own fund in the balkans.

Up to you

</comment><comment><USER186> I'd buy more cash flow generating real estate.

As others have noted, we are printing cash and all assets valued in our currency are likely to be impacted.

Unlike gold, real estate should be able to generate cash and not cost you cash to hold.

They aren't making more land. With rising sea levels there will likely be less land.

Midwest is a great place to invest. So is the south east.

If you want more information about what we do in these areas checkout our website:

[http://www.accredited-capital.com](http://www.accredited-capital.com)

We are working to create returns for investors while also making a local impact by increasing levels of home ownership in areas that have routinely been overlooked by Wall Street.

Depending on your situation, these investments might also not be subject to tax.

Email me for more info if interested lcampbell (at) accredited-Capital (dot) com

<comment><USER13> Property taxes are likely to go up as municipalities struggle with budget issues due to a short and medium-term economic problem of reduced income in retail and other industries.

A huge number of people are thrown out of work and many of those people are renters, and renters pay rent to owners of property, and those property owners rely on the income to pay their mortgages.

They capped property tax and local tax deductions federally, they capped the mortgage interest deduction and can potentially go further in that regard.

I'm playing contrarian not because I think property shouldn't be owned or invested in (I did it as owner-occupier and landlord), or because I disagree with the statement about printing cash having to go somewhere, but rather because your comment is one-sided and sales-y.

</comment></comment><comment><USER187> If you want to learn a lot about startups and feel like meeting with a lot you could distribute it in multiple $20k-$30k bets in up and coming startups you believe in. If you aim at landing cash in 20-30 startups with that cash many of them will go to $0, some will be a break even or moderate success, and 1 or 2 might be a likely winner of the entire strategy. Angel investing isn't for everyone and also there are many better ways to see a "more guaranteed" return on investment but little as interesting as getting a front row seat to the future. If you are purely after risk adjusted returns then just make sure you are allocating to beat inflation, mitigate hyper inflation and into something you know or want to know a lot about. Many great investors out there to learn from but if you want the "starter" guide Angel by Jason Calacanis is a pretty decent book to read.

</comment><comment><USER110> Cash out refi everything you can. At 3%, 30 year fixed, with fed target inflation rates of 2-3%, you'll need a < 1% real return to make money on the transaction (ignoring fees).

If you can't get that with passive investments over the next 30 years, the banks will have bigger problems than your loan.

Despite your risk aversion, consider putting some in a robo advisor (mix of bonds, index, foreign index, etc), to hedge against a spike in inflation, or a crash of just the US economy. The dollar has been falling recently. The robo will auto rebalance as the economic climate shifts.

As for the cash holding, you can at least get 0.35% at Wealthfront in a cash account. (Does anyone know of a higher return cash account?)

Bond yields are slightly higher, but not much these days.

I'm in a similar position, and am also betting on a crash soon.

I have been putting 2-5% into a robo every few weeks (when the market flinches). It's been a bad strategy (I should have gone all in a month or so ago), but it's better than 100% cash. If the market hasn't crashed in a year or so, I'll be all in.

I bet against the market for most of the Obama administration (because the bailout / zero interest rates didn't seem sustainable). Clearly, that was a mistake.

You can't beat the fed, and right now, the fed is printing unlimited money to prop up ETFs and issuers of junk bonds. Also, investors are holding record amounts of cash, and are slowly putting it back into the market in seek of yields.

Good luck.

<comment><USER188> If you're betting on a crash soon, why not just hedge your existing positions on long dated PUT options? That's what they are for , insurance.

As far as OP is concerned, there's not much point into cashing everything if the timescale is greater than 5+ years for needing any of it. Trying to time the market is just a fools game, consistent investments in the indexes always works out in your favor long term.

Regarding interest rates, .35% is pretty poor, just off the top of my head Marcus is over 1%.

<comment><USER189> If you bet on a huge crash then your PUTs will lose the value anyway. So what if they give you 50% profit when the inflation is 1000%.

<comment><USER188> A huge crash will net you much more than 50% profit, you can pull that any day of the week for the last 4 months with the market volatility.

<comment><USER189> With PUTs the maximum you can earn is 99.999%

With inflation you can lose much more.

<comment><USER188> What? That's completely false. The last S&P dump in May net me roughly $1550 per $150 SPY contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER190> For now, steer clear away from index funds, stocks, property investments, etc. Things are looking to get ugly in the near future.

Maybe bear ETFs or put options against stocks that have performed well over the year if you're really looking to drop money into something, but that's pretty risky in itself.

Also, be cautious if thinking about any crypto investments in the next month or so. Short term is way over bought for BTC, but towards end of fall into winter when the price corrects a bit could be a good time to invest a conservative amount.

Just holding and waiting out the coming storm is the safest way to go at the moment imo

</comment><comment><USER191> 1\. Read this: [https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/bitcoin-stock-to-flow- cro...](https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/bitcoin-stock-to-flow-cross-asset- model-50d260feed12)

2\. Buy and hold Bitcoin for a while. (longer is better).

<comment><USER188> Any mention of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency investing should be banned on HN.

<comment><USER192> Arguable, I'd put in a $10,000 into it if I had the cash to spare. It's made me decent money.

<comment><USER188> Yeh sure, made me lots years ago, also cost magnitudes more their life savings. It doesn't sound like OP is looking for gambling.

<comment><USER192> Not really, as far as four months ago, Bitcoin was at 8k per coin... today it's around 11k per coin, it's about 30ish percent profit.

Edit: Unless you bought 11k+ and sold below that point, there's no chance you lost on Bitcoin.

<comment><USER88> Not really, you can double your money at the casino too, doesn't mean it's not gambling.

It's the risk and volatility that separate investment from gambling, not the return. Bitcoin is firmly in the latter territory.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>