There are many different investment products available today. Investors who are just starting out generally opt to invest in funds, ETFs (trackers), and/or shares.
When you buy shares, you are effectively buying a small part of the ownership of a company. The price of a share can go up, down, or stay flat. It all depends on how investors expect the company to perform in the future. Given that share prices can fluctuate a lot, investing in shares is considered high risk.
When investing in an investment fund or ETF, your money is invested along with that of the fund’s many other unit holders. You’re basically buying a small part of the investment fund. The fund invests the money put in by the unit holders in many different shares (an equities fund) or in bonds (a bond fund). Or they invest in a combination of these investment categories (a mixed fund). As you can see, investing in an investment fund or ETF offers an easy way to get a good asset spread in your investment portfolio. This is why this approach to investing is considered less risky than investing in shares (of a small number of companies).
If you want to invest in shares, investment funds and ETFs and take care of everything yourself, you can go for our Self-directed Investing Basic service. If you want the convenience of doing everything online and do not want to have to spend a lot of time on your investments, Guided Investing may be a better option for you. If you have €50,000 or more available for a team of experienced experts to invest, consider Portfolio Management.
To find out more about how to get into investing, we will be happy to tell you what to bear in mind when choosing a good first investment.