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what's the least risky investment for people in europe?
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putting the money in a bank savings account is a reasonably safe investment. anything other than that will come with additional risk of various kinds. (that's right; not even a bank account is completely free of risk. neither is withdrawing cash and storing it somewhere yourself.) and i don't know which country you are from, but you will certainly have access to your country's government bonds and the likes. you may also have access to mutual funds which invest in other countries' government bonds (bond or money-market funds). the question you need to ask yourself really is twofold. one, for how long do you intend to keep the money invested? (shorter term investing should involve lower risk.) two, what amount of risk (specifically, price volatility) are you willing to accept? the answers to those questions will determine which asset class(es) are appropriate in your particular case. beyond that, you need to make a personal call: which asset class(es) do you believe are likely to do better or less bad than others? low risk usually comes at the price of a lower return. higher return usually involves taking more risk (specifically price volatility in the investment vehicle) but more risk does not necessarily guarantee a higher return - you may also lose a large fraction of or even the entire capital amount. in extreme cases (leveraged investments) you might even lose more than the capital amount. gold may be a component of a well-diversified portfolio but i certainly would not recommend putting all of one's money in it. (the same goes for any asset class; a portfolio composed exclusively of stocks is no more well-diversified than a portfolio composed exclusively of precious metals, or government bonds.) for some specifics about investing in precious metals, you may want to see pros & cons of investing in gold vs. platinum?.
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