Investment Products

Last updated February 5, 2022

Many investment products are available to help you achieve your financial goals. The table below includes the products relevant to most investors. The main investment products are stocks, bonds and funds (mutual, ETFs) that hold a variety of stocks and/or bonds.

Although we've included them in the table, gold, crypto and collectibles are typically not recommended to the average investor. This is for a reason—they don't generate earnings or cash flow. These assets are impossible to price, and therefore often have incredible, unpredictable gains and losses. The problem is that there's no fundamental reason why such assets should appreciate over a typical investment horizon.

You should be able to purchase any of these funds with most brokerages. Please realize that historical annual returns are not an indication of future performance. In fact, most experts expect assets to return significantly less over the next decade. We averaged over feedback we received from experts to provide expected annual returns over the next decade (as of August 2, 2021), included in the table. Please realize no one can predict such things accurately. Higher expected average returns typically go hand-in-hand with higher risk and/or volatility.

Notice the rightmost column, which provides a recommended upper limit on how much many experts recommend investing in each category. This article contains a simple, high-level discussion of many of these asset classes.

Please click here for a more complete list of investment options.