Becoming wealthy or financially secure almost always requires investing. However, with so many types of investments out there, it is difficult to know where to start. By reading about and understanding what is available, it becomes much easier to make a decision.

What is the best type of investment? The short answer is 'it depends'. There are a number of factors to take into consideration when investing a lump sum.

Your investment time frame ends when you need access to your investment capital rather than the income from that capital. In general, if you need your capital within five years, it will be best to put your money into an investment with a fixed value to avoid the risk of making a loss.

People love to trade online and the simple reason for this is the amazing convenience factor joined with it. No need to go anywhere and no need to dress up to meet people. One can simply enjoy the experience of stocks in home or in lawn and go online to experience some. Online markets have made the transactions simpler and faster. Initially when share market started, people used to go to the market place and handle so much of paperwork, documents and shares that it was very hectic task for them to do. Still, because of their love for trading and dream of earning huge profits, they used to go everyday to the same market place.

There are many different types of options trading strategies available to investors, each one with a specific benefit. Before beginning to trade any strategy, investors should take the time to understand those benefits, and how they specifically apply to their personal trading program.

When it comes to investing, most of the people may think of the size of the amount needed to kick off with an investment. The common perception of investment is "I need a lot of money before I can even think of investment". This statement may not be true as there are always ways to invest if you do not have much money in hand.

Investing your money is probably the best use of funds you own. However, if it is invested in various financial products without proper research, you can lose every thing you owe. Hence, the process of financial investment starts with effective planning and research.

When it comes to investing, many first time investors want to jump right in with both feet. All too often, we see these same people start out investing with dreams of getting rich overnight. Sure this is possible, but it is also rare, as very few of these investors are successful. So as you can see this mindset is usually a very bad idea to start out with.

Investment strategy is a little like religion in the financial advisor community. There are few situations that would get emotions boiling, fists flying, and require police action faster than putting a buy-and-hold advocate and a market timing zealot in a room and asking them to resolve their differences. The truth is that most strategies work some of the time, a few work most of the time, and only Bernie Madoff figured out how to make one work all the time, right up until he got caught. Investment strategies have two major parts: 1) what investments to buy, and 2) when to buy and sell. Because I'm an investment advisor and human, I have some built-in biases, but following is an attempt to objectively look at several common strategies with a minimum of sarcasm.