Best Investment Options - Top Investment Options for 2021

Ask anyone who is into investing, and they’ll tell you they want their money to bring in tons of sky-high returns within the quickest time possible, and all of that without losing the money. This is what everyone wants, which is why they are always looking for the best investment plans to quadruple their investments without risk!

The problem is this type of investment does not exist. If you want high rewards, you need to risk high too. There are, unfortunately, no plans which are high-risk and low returns. In reality, reward and risk come together. And remember, it all depends on the market. A product may look superb today with great potential to invest in, but if the market is not kind to it, you can lose a lot of money.

That being the case, what can you do if you wish to invest?

When selecting any instrument to invest in, think about the associated risks. There are investments with high risks but with great reward potential as well. It all depends on your ‘risk appetite’, or how much you can afford to risk and lose if things go south. Other investments give low risk but lower rewards as well. 

When it comes to investments, they fall into two buckets: financial and non-financial.

The former are again divided into market linked products like stocks and mutual funds and fixed income products such as public Provident Funds and bank deposits. 

The latter includes real estate and physical gold.

Below given are the top options for Indian investors in 2021.

Direct Equity

Investing in stocks is not for everyone. You can lose a lot and gain a lot from this, but do you want to risk all that money without a guarantee of returns? If yes, go right ahead. But if no, then you may want to think of alternatives. Investing in stocks is challenging as it is not easy to pick stocks.

Timing the buy and sell is not easy either. The only benefit is that over a long period of time, equities can give greater than inflation-adjusted returns when compared to other asset classes. You can, however, also lose most or all of your capital unless you pick the stop-loss method. To reduce your risk, you may want to diversify your portfolio across different markets and sectors.

Equity Mutual Funds

Want less risk when investing? Go for equity mutual funds. These invest in the stock market and are either actively or passively managed. How much returns you get depends on the fund’s manager’s skills. Exchange-traded funds and index funds are passively traded.

Debt Mutual Funds

Pick these if you want a steady income, less volatility and less risk. Debt mutual funds invest in fixed-interest securities such as government securities, corporate bonds, treasury bills, commercial paper and various other money market investment instruments. However, these are not free of risk either. The risks come in the form of credit risk and interest rate risk. 

At the end of the day, it all depends on what you want to do. Do you want high-risk-high-reward investments, or something safer? It’s all on you.