gold, page-71691

I read a book recently and there were two quotes I liked; "Nobody knows anything" and "All debts get paid". This is very true imo. Everyone from people here to Eric Sprott speculates and sometimes we win and sometimes not. And any good decision is only in the context of particular macro economic conditions, so a good decision now could be a terrible one five years later for example.

For conserving wealth:
- gov bonds if you don't want commercial bank risk with term deposits > 250K. No yeild though, and your money could be inflated away. Lol.
- gold / art / other weird stuff to store wealth over the long term like rich people do. Lookup PMGOLD for large quantities.
- instruments leveraged to gold. Gold miners / royalty companies. For now.

For investing, I'm not sure about your friends experience but she'll have a ton of sharks circling now. Need to be wary of getting fleeced.
So with that, if you wanted some money in stock markets I would speak to a very good fund manager (or be a DIY investor). Problem is there's a milllion bad ones out there who will passively invest your money and live of commision gravy train. I don't use fund managers, but two reputable ones I can think of are Roger Montgomery or Alan Hull. This is not an endorsement by any means but to me they seem passionate about managing money (problem: a lot of fund managers are not passionate, it's a day job for them, they don't care about you or your money.).

Alan Hull for example, moved his clients money to cash a few months before the GFC. How many managers did that? Probably less than 1%. I also know he's employed hedging before as anothe strategy for protection in downturns; selling the SPI via futures or options and removing or re-applying the hedge as required depending on market conditions.. This is just an example of what you want to see in a money manger.

You seem to know the commercial property space. I think sticking to what you know is generally smart. Another way to gain exposure to this sector is REITs.

Another option is corporate bonds. This realm is where some big money plays, and gets you exposure to commercial economic activity with good yield. eg coles / telstra bonds. This is the space I would play in if I had the cash. The company FIIG for example manages bond investments and also has access to primay bond markets if you wanted to DIY invest like a trading account.