Where to invest money while looking/waiting at the Market?

Depends on your timing- are you waiting 1,2 ,5 years? or months etc…

Term deposit – for short term
Shares – for longer periods ( but go for shares that pays a stable dividends + blue chip company)
There are another means of investing such as short term mortgage bon , insurance bond etc….all with diff risk portfolio

note: Personal post here, not making any professional recommendation about shares etc….

Regards
Michael

You can get up to 6.01% / 4mths with Ubank on term. Anything other than TD’s are high risk at the moment. Property in the main is trending down so there’s no rush. I don’t see that trend changing any time soon in fact you may see it accelerate as we head into a possible white collar recession.

The imminent collapse of the EU, a slowing China, deficits in Japan (1st in 30yrs), $1T of global debt to roll over this year, and a rising dollar are all coinciding. I’ve said in the past that Aus may just face the perfect financial storm in the near future. I hope like hell that’s not the case but I’m hedging just in case.

2012 is the year to tread very carefully in Aus property markets. My guess is that a few good ol’ boys here on this forum are going to get their britches burnt this year or next.

The Freckle

 Hi Qm,

Every one is going to have a different view on this subject. I think the main important thing is what is your overall goal?
Also there are going to be people who make allot of money in these hard times and then there is going to be people who will loose money or "use the same excuse as last year and the year before and do nothing".

For me i think 2012 is going to be a very good year and there will be allot of great opportunities. But like Michael Chan said its all about timing.
1)Term deposit: Its a very safe investment tool and yes you do 5% return but remember you also have to pay tax on that too.
2) Shares: To me very risky and volatile can you risk loosing any money in the short term? they might go up and they might go down no one really knows. But its all about timing.

If i was on your shoes when i first bought my house the first thing i did was keep it simple, just keeping saving.
Ask your self this how much more money would you like to save for your house?
in what time frame?

then start saving and go from there
3)

Good returns can be made from every real estate market, it's just easier when it's trending up. Personally I'd avoid shares this year but that's just me. Wait till the fall out in Europe has been fully played out. No one I know has made any money on the share market since 2008 and I think 2012 is set up to be extremely volatile.

Look for property where YOU can create the gain in today's market. With the prices lowering and the buyer having an edge in many markets, it's a great time for investors with a creative and lateral thinking strategy.

I look at 'the glass always being full' – 50% water and 50% air – just a matter of how you approach the situation and how you are looking at attaining your goal.

Now as far as your ' bit of money' goes…. depends what total you have, and what your property goal is.

I am looking at purchasing a 2 bed unit next week with the intention of adding a 3rd bedroom. Then renting the unit by the room. If your 'bit of money' is $15,000 then you too can do this tomorrow. Purchase price $100k – reno $15k – rent $465pw  New value $135k. It's a sweet little deal and I will end up with no money down once the property is revalued and +CF, plus some.

How you move forward totally depends on your goal, so asking us on the forum what to do tells me you haven't quite worked this out. That's ok, but it may be a good time to reassess your situation for you and decide… ok what is it I want?.. and go from there. Going through this process may help highlight what it is exactly you should do with your $$$$ for the short and long term.

Ian
http://www.theblockblog.com
Free Property Investment Info, Tools & Resources for Investors with a Sense of Humour

Fantastic question!

There's so much toxic prediction out there and precious little concrete suggestions to pin down. There are good legal reasons why a person might not want to be specific but most predictors aren't specific for other reasons including they don't know any better.

Three important questions you need to answer for any trade:

1) What to I buy
2) How much
3) When do I sell

If a person opines that residential real estate is not a good investment then so what? Steve Keen sold his apartment and values are up significantly in the area since he sold, doesn't mean anything other than prediction and profiting from market timing that prediction can pass by each other quietly in the night without ever meeting. If a person then opines that a fixed term deposit is a good alternative then we have something to test, great.. we can measure our total and risk adjusted returns and build a track record.

Applying the Jan Somers recipe to our three questions we have:

1) Residential property!
2) When you can afford it
3) Never

Not a perfect recipe by any means as Jan admits herself but one that will continue to perform well (even if under longer term trend) with a few assumptions.

1) Take Residex 5yr forward predicted returns
2) Favourable tax, leverage and government support continue to exist
3) We aren't invaded or something equally disastrous, there's always a possible scenario to cancel all bets

This is just for buy and hold investors, those who are actively adding value are doing great in this market and will continue to make money but they can reasonably be viewed as operating a business rather than being purely investors.

Also back on track… offset accounts set a high benchmark to beat when you take into account tax considerations

Weh it comes to TDs, i like to use a laddered approach. This means that rather than putting all my money in one TD as a big lump sum, I break down the amounts, and create  TD every month or so. So that TDs finish up their term in laddered periods of time – which means that I will be able to access some of that money at various times if needed