investment options 2017

My dear dudes,

I receive a lot of messages asking for investment tips. “I make 50k, have two children and 30k debt. How and where can I invest, in 2017?”

The best investment options for you are based on your availability, personality, personal situation and a few other factors. This post will provide you with a generic list of investment possibilities, which I think will be particularly prominent in 2017. You will have to filter them out and consider whether they would be good for you. I always advise consulting a licensed advisor.

Here are some of best investment options for 2017…

1 – Create an online business

My first choice among investment options for 2017 would be an online business. It takes relatively low kick-start costs, it can grow a lot given that the internet can only grow, and it is very profitable if you know what you’re doing (I personally make very little monies online at this point, but I’ve seen the potential of it). If that is the case, have a look at these stats:

Here’s what I expect for my own blog: 100k views/month till the end of this year, which will generate a gross income of about 2k/month. This is the goal and I am serious about it.

The truth about blogs

Although I think online businesses are great, I don’t want you to be misled, tough. You wake up to stories of bloggers who click on a few buttons and make 30k a month. It’s so easy to be a blogger right? WRONG. From my experience, this is a very hard task. Really, if you think about all the tasks you need to perform to be a moderately successful blogger, you go nuts:

  • You must deliver really good content (which takes hours to write, as in most cases you have to do research on the topic, proofread your text and ask for opinions)
  • Engage with other bloggers;
  • Design your own blog and all the pictures you associated with each post (because designers are expensive)
  • Do SEO, which consumes a LOT of time.
  • …

While this may be a road to riches for some, it’s certainly not an easy one!

2 – Peer-to-peer (P2P) Lending

I have personally invested into P2P lending for about one year, although I haven’t allocated much capital yet as I am running low on liquidity. I like P2P lending because it is totally passive and guarantees great rates. Twino, the platform I use the most, has a buy back guarantee, which means that the platform will buy the loan if it defaults.

Why P2P lending

For me, it was such a nice way to increase my fixed income, on this period of low-interest rates. If you had bonds yet to mature, you are safe, but many people have witnessed their bonds maturing in this period, and they either had to accept higher risk to maintain high yields or lower their yield rates. For me, P2P lending platforms are great if you want fixed-income exposure, with a variety of options regarding risk, but at generally (much) higher rates.

How peer-to-peer lending works

Peer-to-peer lending platforms connect individuals who want to take a loan and individuals willing to lend money. Some platforms offer pools of loans to limit the risk of investors. Most platforms show you the borrowers credit score so that you can decide whether you want to lend money. Some platforms, like Twino, offer a buyback guarantee, which means they will buy the loan even if it defaults. In the US, popular P2P platforms include Lending Club and Prosper.

3 – Fancy tech

The personal robots ecosystem is about to explode, in my opinion. We will see a growth in this field comparable to what we have seen with computers and smartphones. The wide of applications of personal robots is immense. However, I still believe that drones will guide the next generation of tech explosion. Amazon recently announced its first commercial drone delivery last month. I think that drones will have a lot but above all very important applications, including for the police, military, firefighting, rescuing corps, transporation and agriculture.

The tone is set for the future: we will see more and more tech available to the John Does of the world.

4 – Sustainable transportation and solar tech

I love Tesla. It is probably my favorite company in the world (and Elon Musk my favorite entrepreneur). Tesla proved we are capable of using tech to our favor if we discard economic interests, by creating fast, beautiful and (now) affordable and high-autonomy electric cars. If you bought 50 shares of Tesla in 2013, at $38 a piece (less than $2k invested), you would be looking at $12k worth of stock today (i.e. a 630% fold increase in a matter of 3 years). We are confident that sustainable transportation will change the world, and become widespread as great investment opportunities. Early investors will reap the benefits, I am convinced.

Have a look at what Solar City is promising in terms of products and costs. It is just mind blowing. The company has also announced a $750 million solar facility in Buffalo, which will produce a gigawatt of high-efficiency solar panels per year. This will allow homeowners to have solar panels for any production, and the company has also a special solar panel which replaces the traditional rooftops, at a lower cost…  SolarCity is already the leading installer of residential solar panels in the United States, and its solar panels cost the company $2.84 per watt (and projections have been made to get it below $2.5).

5 – Marijuana

Marijuana is the last of the best investment options I have identified for 2017. Now that it will be legalized in some states of the US, it is just a market bounded to grow. Across the US cost, marijuana is currently legalized in most states. Currently, there is a total of 28 states (plus the District of Columbia) which now allow legal use of marijuana for medical use.

states legal marijuana

Many marijuana stocks have obtained gains of over 2.000% in 2016. Ackrell Capital projects that the cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals market will be as big as $50 billion pa. A pretty big number huh? Despite this figure, we should keep in mind that there are only 3 FDA-approved cannabinoid drugs (Marinol and Cesamet, in 1985 and Syndros, approved in July last year). For more info on investing in Marijuana, I recommend a look at this article written byKeith Speights, which I obtained the image above from.