Keep it liquid and safe- earning 4% safely seems fine to me these days. FOREX and Gold are scary.
Inflation is more than %4, so you're not actually earning anything. Gold, is pretty steady, so you can dollar cost average in if you think it is at a local maxima. It benefits from being immune to inflation, plus it is entering into the bull market phase.
The way I know gold is just beginning its bull market is that your percpetion that it is "scary" is very common. (and understandable) It will be scary for a long time before it becomes "a can't lose proposition that everyone has got to get into!" We are at the "Awareness" phase where it is not uncommon to hear that you should buy gold.... but it is not a mainstream investment yet.
When it becomes one, and then enters a strong bull market, people who bought now will benefit greatly from not only the inflation protection, but this additional demand.
Unfortunately, that mainstreaming and additional demand will cause prices to go very high, resulting in people advocating it from a momentum basis, which will cause momentum to accelerate and gold will lift off and become a bubble.
Since we've all just lived thru the housing bubble we should be able to identify it. That's when you get out (and no need to try and call the top, getting out early in a bubble is fine... so long as you've identified a fundamentally undervalued sector to move into.)
Maybe I'm seeing things from a skewed view point, but from where I sit, gold is the absolute ultra-hyped fad investment right now.
This is the real problem we've seen in gold bull markets in the past, and currently the derivatives trade far exceeds the global supply of gold. (And an "IOU" is a derivative)
I'd recommend either holding physical yourself or holding allocated gold on account with a trustworthy depository.
The ETF, however, is probably good if you want to try an option strategy.
Any angel or VC would require you to do this. Basically all serious business do this.
If you have a solid business with even a small chance of requiring additional investment in the future, it is crazy to be screwing around in the markets.
This is keeping bond yields low (and below inflation anyway).
When it comes to light or has to stop, or the remaining foreign buyers all quit (Because yields are low and the market says they should be higher) then yields will have to rise.
When this happens previous bonds that have low yields will have their values drop....
Don't fuck with currencies or commodities unless you have a you have a competitive advantage over everyone else (like if George Soros was managing your macro currency bets).
Personally, I'd rather have a lot of cash on hand or in something very liquid like stocks, as oppose to CD's or bonds, because not only do they pay almost no interest right now, but investment opportunities can come in the blink of an eye.
Edit: I would recommend staying away from tax free municipal bonds, there is going to be a wave of defaults coming with all these over-leveraged cities and local governments.
Something to think about: Diversify your holdings. A good 80% of what you have can milk a high rate from a savings account (domestic or foreign). 10% could be put in a couple of low-moderate risk ETFs/Mutual Funds (formed by companies that really arn't going anywhere, like healthcare), 5% into CDs or Bonds, and the remaining % in minerals (gold, silver).
When you start hearing good news (job market improving, ipos, companies returning healthy profits), you can start re-aligning your portfolio.
Best bet is to get in touch with a financial adviser.
You really have to find what suit you best. - currency - bonds - options - futures - warranty - etf ... ..
For someone who do not have the time to invest I would say think Vanguard, think Bond, think ETF. Alternatively, I would invest in startups that Kevin R or Gary V invests in, or startups that Google or Oracle might one day acquired.
If you just want to preserve capital with some appreciation short term bonds (look at Vanguard or Pimco offerings) or money market accounts can be a good idea.
Even a high yield saving or a CD ladder (both FDI insured) could be nice depending on how much cash you have and what kind of liquidity you want (between 1-2% return for 1-2 yr CDs and 1-1.5% return on high yield savings)
The best, first investment you can make is in money and time to get enough understanding and perspective to be able to sense the value of any investment. All advice is static, but perspective is a dynamic benefit.
I strongly recommend reading "Buffetology" by Mary Buffet and "How to invest like warren buffett" by (I think) Timothy Vick.
Then spend time learning economics. Economics in one lesson is available free online, and the Mises institute has regular articles on the state of the economy: http://mises.org
It was from an article on the Mises institute in 2001 that I learned about the housing bubble. Yes, that is two thousand and one. I was well placed to profit when the bubble burst.
Here are some basics though: Buy things that are correctly valued where you have good reason to know they will appreciate. Do not follow the pack. The pack is wrong. The conventional advice is, generally bad advice.
The US economic situation is in dire straights and to keep things going the fed is printing money like never before. This is why people are talking about buying gold. This is pretty much a no-brainer. Inflation is around %20, so by putting cash into gold you have a %20 return on purchasing power. The reason people get confused is that they think that the dollar is a constant, but inflation erods purchasing power and even if it doesn't happen immediately and everywhere it does happen. Gold, and other precious metals are a good hedge against inflation.
I've had good experiences in the past buying REIT type assets, in particular, you can buy Canadian Trusts that pay out a royalty based on the exploitation of mineral or oil or natural gas leases and wells. A good one of these would be one that is growing reserves while still paying a good royalty. Back when I was doing this, I was getting %5-%10 return, on top of stock price appreciation on top of a %5-%10 annualized growth in value due to the dollar slipping against the canadian dollar.
On currencies, generally countries with strong commodities based economies will do well, and countries with economies based on Keynesian "stimulus" spending will do bad. So, if you do hold cash, try to hold it in currencies like the Canadian dollar.
Here's a quick economic lesson: Any government "Stimulus" will do more damage than benefit the economy. The reason for this is the government spends money poorly, but even if they spent it well, the act of spending does damage because they are taking the money out of the economy at the place where it would do the most good for economic growth. Government spending all comes from taxes and inflation. The tax money is taken out of corporate and individual profits-- off of the bottom line-- leaving less money for reinvestment and demand creation, exactly at the point where the demand and jobs are created. Inflation hurts the same way by driving up ongoing expenses reducing profits and causing people to have less money to allocate to expansion. Meanwhile the spending goes to boondoggles that are politically desired and benefit specific politicians and don't generally have a net positive economic return (They talked a lot about roads, but only a tiny fraction went to roads and a lot of that was lost in graft anyway.)
You can buy steady companies that are well run and which trade for less than their net values-- Aflac and Berkeshire Hathaway are two good examples of this. I never bought Apple because, while I am an Apple fan it was outside my area of expertise. I'm an engineer, but I can't predict the fotunes of the tech industry well enough!
IF someone else is going to manage your money, make it be Warren Buffett, not some fund manager on wallstreet. (probably the worse deal in the world is a mutual fund, and this includes index funds that take a percentage of your net worth for "management" that involves just buying stocks that appear on a list. You can buy stocks off of a shopping list yourself.)
It is important to recognize that there is a lot of nonsense out there, a lot of conventional wisdom that has been passed down the generations that started out as stock brokers sales pitches. Much of the industry is aligned around choices that are designed to make the people who peddle stocks, etc wealthy.
BTW, bonds are toast, will be killed by inflation and then when yields have to go up the low yielding bonds we're getting now due to "quantitative easing" are going to crater.
Oh, and read the Letters to Shareholders in the annual Berkshire Hathaway reports. Good advice from the best investor in the country. Buffett wont' advise you to buy commodities, he calls his purchase of silver "a great mistake"-- which it was only because he sold too soon. But he is good for general wisdom, and if you do decide to pick stocks, best to understand as much as you can how he does it.
