Whats the best way to invest 50,000 dollars with no knowledge of the stock market is it too risky to play it ?

is real estate too risky

You should invest in a diversified mix of stocks, bonds, and money market funds. You want to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks as individual stocks are too risky. Most folks have a dificult time buying a properly balanced portfoilio of stocks on their own. They will misbalance their portfolio by buying all small stocks or all growth stocks, or some other misbalanced assortment of stocks. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best to buy mutual funds. I like Vanguard.com, other people like Fidelity, TIAA-CREF, and DFA. Buy no-load, low cost funds. If you are like most people you will invest part of your money aggressively in stock funds, and part conservatively in money market funds and bond funds. Vanguard.com has an on-line questionnaire which will give you an idea of how to do "Asset Allocation," determining how much to put in each type of fund.

If your company offers a 401K plan at work, try to invest the most you can. The money grows tax free, and some companies will match your contribution. Investing in a mutual fund IRA is also a good idea. If you have children, you may want to consider a 529 plan or other college savings plan that grows tax free.

I like index funds. Because of their broad diversification, you are less likely to have a dramatic drop in value. They also have the lowest expenses. For stock funds, I would suggest putting ~70-80% of your money in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. and ~20-30% in a foreign stock index fund. However, there are many different opinions out there on what the best mutual funds are. Read the links below and form your own opinion.

Buying a house instead of renting will save you a lot of money in the long run. You don't have to pay rent and you build equity in your house instead. Buying rental property can also be a good investment. However, being a landlord can be hard work, and many people are not good at it. If you don't know how to handle deadbeat renters, you can have trouble.

If you have high-interest debt, like credit cards, it is best to pay this off first before trying most of the investment ideas above. You should also have 3-6 months of salary saved up as an emergency fund in a bank or money market fund before trying more risky investments.

Believing advice you get on Yahoo answers can be risky, so read these websites for further information. If you find it too confusing, contact a professional financial advisor. They will charge you significant commissions, however.

Sources:

http://www.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/planningeducation
http://www.fool.com/school.htm
http://sec.gov/investor/pubs/assetallocation.htm
http://www.diehards.org/readsites.htm
http://finance.yahoo.com/education/begin_investing
http://finance.yahoo.com/funds/basics

Asset Allocation Calculators
(Determining how much to put in stocks and how much into bonds and money markets is a personal decision depending on your financial status. These Asset Allocation questionaires give you a rough idea how to do this. I like Vanguard best, but try some of the other sites as well.)
https://flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsInvQuestionnaire?cbdInitTransUrl=https%3A//flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/planningeducation/education
https://ais2.tiaa-cref.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects.exe/DTAssetAlcEval
http://www.ifa.com/SurveyNET/index.aspx

Web forum: http://www.diehards.org/
(Many investment web forums are overrun by scam artists. This one seems the most legitimate site.)

529 plans: http://www.savingforcollege.com

start with no load mutual funds and good luck.

I would refrain from stocks if you don't know anything about them. If you are still bent on investing in stocks without the requisite knowledge, then find yourself a reputable broker and have them invest and advise for you. Most people who lose it all in stocks do so because they thought they knew better than their broker.

You'd be amazed at how fast you can lose that kind of money if you don't know what you are doing.

Someone said get an advisor...good advice. Even before you do that take a few hundred dollars and invest in LEARNING about the market(s)...Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham; The Battle for Stockmarket Profits by Gerald Loeb (or any of his other titles); A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton J Malkeil; and Bulls, Bears, & Bastards by Martin Garry & Vincent Guarine. Read these first than go speak with a financial planner. PEACE!

Talk to a financial advisor. Or if you want, invest in RIMM, it's really good and it's getting better.

any investment is as risky as the lack of control you have over it. some mutual funds may have had spectacular returns, but you still surrender complete control to people you have to trust to know how to pick stocks better than you can.

buying individual stocks yourself, and by stocks you should think in terms of buying *companies*, may seem risky, but you can control your risks by thoroughly studying the companies and keeping your stop-losses current.

and if you can control all aspects of any real estate investments you make, they will be no riskier than anything else.

but for starters, if i had $50k to invest tomorrow, i'd:

1. put 5-10% in gold;
2. put 5-10% in silver (or a combo of silver, platinum and palladium).

the precious metals would be my "wealth insurance", because having just cash is also risky nowadays;

3. put the rest in a current savings account paying at least 5%;
4. start studying everything there is to know about the world economy and economic trends as the basis for making any kind of investments.

even with $40k "in the bank", you'll still be getting about $170/mo. for doing nothing, and you can take your time learning.

for my money, the best investments in the next few years will be:

1. US real estate *after* it bottoms out;
2. industrial and agricultural commodities;
3. foreign stock markets and emerging economies.

Investing is not a do it yourself project. Losing money can never be fun nor will it help you accomplish your goals.

actually with all the default going on you can find good deal in real estate

in stock market, invest in company who is getting a cut from chinese boom. the market is still bullish so there are oppertunities out there. I can give you a list and you need to do your homework to find the one that u are comfortable with (aapl, goog, msft, rimm, bidu, cml, t, c, gs, amzn, vmw, emc, hon, rtn)

dont miss the alibaba.com IPO and next year's VISA IPO

The BEST way to be in the stock market but not know anything of the market, would be to be in the two most common yardsticks of market performance. If you buy some diamonds (stock symbol DIA, an exchange traded fund, or ETF, that simply buys the 30 stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial averages) and spyders (stock symbol SPY, which buys the 500 companies of the Standard & Poors, S&P, 500), then you have bought into a solid portfolio without sweating the details. The advantage of this is that almost everytime you hear the stock market news on radio or TV, they will tell you what the Dow Jones average did, or the S&P500 did, so you know at a glance how your holdings are doing. The problem with this is two-fold: (1) you buy losers along with winners (they average out a little up or down each day), and (2) when you talk to others about investments they will speak about this company or that which did better than either of these two (or both) averages.

If you don't get envious, or greedy, you can stick with these simple sets and USUALLY grow in value more than money in the bank drawing interest. Money in the bank, is likely insured, as for the principle, but there are no assurances for the stock market--only general trends. While you are at it, look at a couple of other ETFs: NY (top 100 companies on the New York Stock Exchange), DVY (steady set of dividend paying companies), IOO (100 largest publicly traded companies in the world), and maybe PXN (the biggest players in nanotechnology, amazing stuff coming).

You can play it comparatively safe with these, make some money with these, and still not know beans about the stock market because if these embarrass you, most of the rest of the market has made fools of all the rest of us, we've just entered the next Great Depression.

The real estate and stock markets are not risky. The investor is risky. If you do not understand either market, put your money in a bank money market account.

It is way too risky. Start by reading "Investing For Dummies." Learn the basics of investing first.

If I didn't need a quick return I would put it in Goggle

You really must determine what your goal is, and have an honest assessment of risk tolerance. From least risky to most risky, treasury bonds, municipal bonds, corporates, and other types of bonds, broad stock indicies, narrower indicies, international markets, emerging markets, etc. The order might change from year to year, but you should put a portfolio of these components together that reflects your risk tolerance. Things don't always work out as planned, see subprime bond performance, which was supposed to be lower risk. But a good longer term strategy that gets rebalanced annually will help create wealth. Go and try and talk to a financial planner at fidelity or schwab if you need help constructing a portfolio. Unless you know how to pick stocks, an index fund, or ETF is probably a good investment for the stock components.

if you have 50 grand, perhaps you ought to invest financial protection. use things like insurance and business entities like the FLP or CRT to protect your assets from taxation and liability. start there, after that, you can can invest in whatever, you like knowing your profits are safe.

talk to a financial advisor. they usually only take a small percentage of the money they make you.

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