ON YOUR OWN

The bottom line is this no one cares more about your money and investments than you. That is a simple fact. Another fact is that with life as busy as it is with our own jobs, kids, families, and the many activities that we have one of the things that most people don't possess enough of is time. The ability to dedicate time to educating oneself to the utmost provides a significant factor in whether your investments will produce profits or simply dwindle. So if you are going to take control of your investments you must acquire the right amount of knowledge, and to do that will take time.

This type of education is not found at most universities and really it depends in what market you venture out to invest in whether it be stocks, bonds, Forex, futures, commodities, real estate, gold, silver, you have to do your homework before you invest your hard earned money into such markets. In addition to the right amount of knowledge it is paramount to not put all of your eggs in any one basket, indeed for the very affluent and wealthy who were diversified amongst many different investment types the economic downturn yes hurt their overall portfolios, but not as much as the typical American who may have had a large majority of their portfolio invested in the stock market or even in real estate. So the ability to diversify into different investment vehicles is another factor that will determine one's success.

After education is obtained through property time management and a wise selection of well diversified, non-correlated investments is selected feel free to begin small and then as profits and understanding begin to occur you can gradually increase your investment positions. By following these guidelines your probabilities for success increase substantially, one additional item that helps is experience simply having experience especially with an investment that does not do so well can provide incalculable benefits to the average investor.

However, for most people this is an extremely difficult task and as such it is worth looking at Professional services and what advantages they may have over doing it on your own.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Some of the same keys to success for managing one's investments on one's own are some of the same reasons that Professional Services can often perform better than doing it on your own. A Professional may have significantly more time and resources to dedicate to managing investments than the average person. A Pro may also have obtained knowledge that can only be acquired through time and experience that will increase the odds to making profitable decisions.

What must be demanded of any Professional service with respect to Money management is that the manager provide complete transparency. Because even if an Investment Advisor or Money Manager is licensed with the appropriate financial regulators there is no certainty that the account statements being provided are legitimate at all. As such the opportunity to work with someone who is simply a Trading Advisor who has a limited power to simply manage funds, but not actually have power to withdraw them or touch them is a more transparent and advantageous scenario versus just giving someone your money to invest (i.e. Bernie Madoff.) Trade Advisors will be approved money managers at Financial brokerages and the brokerages provide the sole service of acting as a check and balance for accounts including monitoring unscrupulous money managers as well as terrorist funding and money laundering. So dealing with an Advisor who works with a broker can bring the transparency and the control that is so important to have with investing.

To conclude a combination of investing on your own as well as utilizing Professional Advisors who provide absolute transparency and a solid track record can bring you overall growth and profitability with your investments.

Leo Kanell is Chief Investment Officer of FX Diversified. With knowledge and experience in a vast array of businesses from import/export, online marketing, consulting, real estate, and investing, Mr. Kanell provides a unique point of view when it comes to managing decisions and risk with FX Diversified. Top priorities are diversification in Forex, management of risk allocation, providing clients transparency, and liquidity in a unique Investment realm. More info can be found at http://www.fxdiversified.com/

View the original article here