Investment strategies aren't just about picking the best investments you can find, but about picking investments that are more beneficial together than they are on their own.
Here are some basic strategies to build your investments.
The most common strategy is simple diversification of investments.
For bonds, this means staggering your coupon and maturity dates not only to provide consistent income but also so that you can more readily respond to changes in the market, rather than having the entirety of your bond investments tied up at the same time.
For stocks, this means picking high-quality investments which tend to fluctuate in price in opposite directions; as one stock decreases in value in the short run, another should increase, but both should appreciate over the long run.
In the same manner, including global diversification of stock investments can reduce the impact of global trends.
Diversifying into types of investment you have can help you find an appropriate balance of potential gain and risk - maintaining a percentage of your portfolio in stocks or even high-risk investments like speculative stocks or junk bonds and the remainder of your portfolio in low-risk investments.
Options
Many options make use of a combination of stocks and derivatives.
Buying stocks as well as a put option gives you the upside potential of the stock but limits your potential losses by guaranteeing you will be able to resell the stock at the price noted in the option. So long as your gains exceed the purchase cost of the put option, you will remain "in the black".
If you believe a stock will decrease in price, you can sell it short and then buy a call option, so that if you are wrong you can repurchase the stock at a guaranteed maximum price, putting a limit on the immense risk associated with shorting stock.
Buying both a call and a put option with the same strike price (the price at which you can exercise your option) means that you will make money regardless of which direction the stock moves, so long as the move is large enough that you earn more money than the cost of the options. This strategy is known as a "straddle".
In a strategy known as a "collar", you buy a stock and sell a call option on the stock , so that if the price of the stock increase, the option buyer will likely exercise their option; this creates limited upside potential, but the money from the sale of the call option can be used to fund a put option, so that you eliminate the cost of the option. The result is that you create both a "floor" and a "cap" (a maximum amount of loss and gain, respectively), functioning as a collar that limits the amount of movement in the stock price.
The strategies available to you are varied and numerous. As you get more practice using them, you can expand to develop multi-step strategies.
[Diversification: The act of investing in several different investments to reduce the potential value of loss if a single investment fails.
Buying a call option gives you the choice to purchase a given volume of something at a specified price, so long as you do so before the maturity date.
Buying a put option gives you the choice to sell a given volume of something at a specified price.
Regardless of what happens to the market price, the seller of the option is obligated to participate in the exchange if the buyer decides to exercise the option.]
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