7 Great Ways to Invest $1000

There was a time when only big institutions and people with a lot of money had access to the stock market. Now you have apps that automatically reinvest your spare change in ETFs and other products.

The world of investing has changed a lot and gives more opportunities for the small person on the street to start building a portfolio. While $1000 is not the best amount to start investing, it's still enough to take advantage of many investment opportunities. Here are a few ways you can invest $1000.

Put it in a High-Interest Savings Account

A high-interest savings account will not give you the best returns, but it's the surest way to invest your money. It might take you a lot of time for that money to grow, but you won't have to worry about blood baths on the stock market and it doesn't demand too much expertise. Investing is not for everybody, and if you can't handle the risk and don't understand it, it's a bad idea to even consider it, so think about this option.

Get Into the Forex

The forex is often pushed on beginners with little experience and money, and it does have its advantages. The fundamentals of currency trading are something most people understand, which makes the concept of forex easier to grasp. It's also possible to open an account for as little as $100. So that's two points in favor of the forex.

One thing, however, is that it's not necessarily the most beginner-friendly investment method. Timing movements on the forex is much more difficult than on the stock market. It's much easier to gauge the reaction to news when you're talking about stocks than currencies.

This is why you shouldn’t assume that you can come in and start trading the news. If you want to be successful in the forex, you will need to master technical indicators as they are the main factor influencing decisions on the markets. You should also know that it’s almost impossible to make good money on the forex with little starting capital unless you use leverage.

If you don’t know how leverage works, it allows you to control more money than you actually put in. For instance, if a broker offers you a 1:20 leverage ratio, this means that you can control a $20 position while putting only a dollar down. This is done by the broker lending you the money to make up the difference.

Leverage can be both great or disastrous depending on how you use it. We would suggest that you do not go over 20x leverage if you want to stay on the safe side. We also suggest that you think twice about trading exotic pairs as they may be more volatile and not as liquid.

ETFs

ETFs are the hot new kid on the block and the word on everybody's lips. ETFs are similar to bonds in many ways but are traded on the open market just like bonds. Like bonds, these allow you to invest in a portfolio of industries, and you can track an ETF's performance to choose which one would be the most reliable.

At the same time, you can trade these just like stocks, so you can use them to be for or against certain companies or sectors. ETFs also allow you to track the movement of indices like the S&P 500 or the Dow.

Investing in Stocks with Dividends

This is one of the most traditional ways to invest in the stock market. Buying a piece of stock literally means that you are now a part-owner of a company. But not all companies will share a part of their profit. Those who do pay investors back with dividends.

If you have a nice portfolio with solid companies with a great future and a good financial strategy, these dividends could keep paying back your whole life. We’re not saying you’re going to get rich overnight here. But it could help you if you’re trying to build a nest egg for the future and you start early.

If you want to learn to buy stocks, we suggest you check out WealthSimple. They have a helpful beginner's guide on how to trade stocks and some of the best options for beginners. They also explain a few strategies that you can use as well as how to spot when a stock is worth investing in.

Start a Business

There’s also nothing that is stopping you from investing in yourself and starting a business. You don’t even need that much to start one. You could start a blog or website with as little as $50 a month and start making money.

Here, it would be wise to invest some of that money in education. There are plenty of online classes you could join, and you could try to get skills that will help you build a sustainable business. We suggest you look into courses that will allow you to sell or use your skills, such as web design, writing, or advertising.

Once you’ve done that, you can start looking at different business models. Do you want to start a blog and monetise it? Do you want to sell services? Or maybe you want to start an e-commerce site?

Know that these are all attainable ways to make money online, but all of them demand hard work and dedication. Your best bet here would be to get someone to mentor you and give you advice based on experience. The next step is having a solid plan with a proven business model and executing.

One thing you shouldn't do, however, is wait until everything is absolutely perfect before getting started. This is the time for trial and error, and you'd be surprised at what the world's greatest sites looked like when they were first launched. So, don't be afraid to fail and take a little bit of risk.

Robo Advisors

Robo advisors are a great option for people who may not have the expertise needed to invest in products like ETFs, stocks, and bonds, but don’t want to hire a financial planner. These can cost a lot of money, and a lot of people don’t realise that they’re not in the obligation to give you the best advice even if they know a certain option would be better for you.

Many of them are incentivised to push certain products, and it’s completely legal for them to do so as long as these products are deemed “acceptable”. So, you can’t take financial planners at face value.

Robo advisors, on the other hand, will start building investment strategies for you using advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence in some cases. They will start by asking you a series of questions. A lot of these will be to assess your tolerance to risk.
What’s great about robo advisors is that you don’t have to go for their picks. If you don’t like the strategy, you can always adjust it based on what you need. Another thing you can do is adjust the level of risk and the financial instruments you’ll be investing in.

For instance, you could go for riskier investments when you’re younger and lower the level of risk with time to give you a better guarantee on returns. Robo advisors are also one of the cheapest and most accessible ways of investing.

Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is another investment opportunity that is often presented as beginner-friendly. But cryptocurrency is a very tough asset to invest in, and you should be on your guard before spending too much money on crypto.

One of the biggest issues with crypto is the uncertainty in the markets. This is by far the most volatile of all assets on this list. Cryptocurrencies can go to zero overnight, and we've seen it before. While bitcoin is not likely to go to zero any time soon or ever, a lot of its movement is befuddling even experts in the field.

Buying and trading crypto is also not as simple as many people might think. For one, coins like bitcoin have very high fees and make it virtually impossible to trade small sums, so that's an obstacle both for trading and adoption. It also can't handle many transactions per second.

You also have to get yourself a crypto wallet which is a piece of software or hardware that stores your private and public keys which are crucial for exchanging and storing transactions. This wallet can also be lost, and your coins along with it, so that is something you'll have to think about before putting all your money into the crypto basket.

Here, we would suggest that you do your research on any cryptocurrency before you invest in it. Learn about the different types there are out there (privacy coins, stable coins, payment currencies, blockchain economies) and learn how to read a white paper. Just like anything else, you should know what you're investing in, so if you're just doing so because it's the cool thing to do, you're asking for trouble.

These are all great ways that you could start investing even if you have limited capital. Now that you have more options, you can start looking at which ones would fit your investment style and objectives the best.