There are different attributes of any financial instrument.Depending upon nature of investor one should invest in instrument suitable for him.
1.Safety: Any investor will want safety of its investment.But each and every instrument carries Risk whether it is major or minor.But if we ignore credit risk associated ,bank fixed deposits offer the highest safety while there may be different opinions about lowest safe products. According to some it may be stock trading or it may be real estate.
2.Returns: Returns and Risk always run parallel to each other.Low risk comes with low returns and vice versa for higher returns.
Whenever we watch different TV channels and see nearly most of advisors are predicting 15% returns from Indian market,,but any investor should be ready to face the same downward risk.
3.Liquidity: It is a measure of how easily one can convert the financial instrument into cash.
Real estate offers lowest liquidity as one can not convert it into cash so much easily.
4.Transparancy: It may not be the primary attribute of any instrument,but it certainly contains value.
Gold can be purchsed from Jewellers as well from different exchanges.Purchases from exchages is more transparent as investor exactly knows the purchase value and quality.
