Ask HN: How would you invest money if you were 25 again?

> Right now, were in a high inflation environment [...]

Have you checked inflation figures recently?

Are you sure about the predictability aspect? How much money did you make during the last bubble (and its bursting)?

Please don't. Please use the voting buttons for expressing contribution to the discussion, and not agreeing/disagreeing.

And real estate is not that bad an investment in general, if you do not rely on it going up forever. The real problem is its illiquidity.

I'd invest in a way that didn't consume thousands of hours worth of my time.

I'd do what Mark Cuban recommended people like those found on HN (young entrepreneurs who want to launch a start-up) do: 6 month term back CD's:

http://blogmaverick.com/2010/08/20/the-stock-market-is-still...

When I was in my early 20's the president of a start-up I was working for (whom was a former professional stock trader) essentially gave me the same great advice Mark Cuban gave everyone. He told me to not focus on investing in the stock market because the amount of time I'd need to invest to do well would never yield as good of a return as I could get from investing that time instead on my computing and start-up related skills. He advised me to stick to what I was good at (computers) rather than trying to take on essentially a second job and build a second career in trading.

Looking back, I'm 100% sure he was absolutely right. In the last ten years, I've spent thousands and thousands of hours reading books on the investing, reading financial news, watching Bloomberg and CNBC programs, doing research on companies, developing and testing trading strategies, doing simulated trading, and trading. From all that time investment, my return was probably -5%. It was almost flat. That isn't bad considering that the markets have been so bad over the last 10 years. In fact, it's pretty good. But, had I spent all those thousands of hours on start-ups I probably would have had at least one big success by now.

I also would have been a lot less stressed and lived a lot happier life. I vividly remember the sick feelings I got during the crashes and upon watching the fallout from unforeseeable things like the bail-outs and the oil super spike.

Even if I didn't do bank CD's, I could have just bought index funds and done better with out all the work and wasted time. I think CD's are the way to go. If you really want stocks, it's index funds.

I almost got involved in the real estate market and other types of investments. I'm glad I didn't. Again, it would have taken a huge amount of time investment to compete with other involved professional investors. And, looking back now, I can almost say for sure I would have come out essentially flat if I made very good decisions and with heavy losses if didn't.

I don't want to reveal personal finance info, suffice to say I was very happy.

Real estate cycle is very predictable. It takes a long time and lot of effort to go up and it has a long leading time before it drops, unlike stocks. Real estate is also more depending on real economic factors which are more trackable and less manipulated by market makers than stocks.

For the last down turn, people had been screaming the housing market was overheated from 2004 to 2006, with graphs after graphs showing it's unsustainable. It's really a matter of whether you listened to them.

For predicting housing bottoming out and rising, check out the rental rate, vacancy rate, interest rate, employment trends, permits issued, housing started, inventory backlog, days on market, etc. If that's too much work, just monitor the long term sales price graph. It's not too late to join the train ride once it starts moving up. The thing about real estate is that once it starts moving up, it's very difficult to stop. There are too many factors to keep pushing it up. Likewise, once it starts falling, it will keep falling for a long time.

Of course, that's only the investment aspect of it. There are many other facets. I would encourage people to study economic, finance, and real estate. Don't dismiss it just because a big burst. It's actually a great opportunity to get in. There's an investment saying, most money are made when blood is running on the street.