Saving and Investing

If you're putting money into non riskfree investments make sure that it is SEPERATE from your bankroll. I.e. Cash it out and don't count it as part of your bankroll. There are a few reasons for this:
- Investments are volatile, a downswing in your investments coinciding with a downswing in poker may force you to drop levels to be properly bankrolled.
- If you were looking at your investments everyday you may be affected by large losses or large gains which could adversely affect your play.
- If you noticed a large drop in your investment you may panic and cash it out at the worst possible time (i.e. at the bottom).
- If you needed to use it as part of your bankroll the frequent transactions would cause a lot of transaction costs (commissions, spreads, penalties/fees, etc.) which would eat into your return.

So if you were happy to stay at the same level for a while and not move up you should definitely cash some out and start investing it. The best thing for an inexperienced investor, who doesn't have the time or inclination to learn, is to passively invest your money.

You can put your money into funds. Index funds are unmanaged funds that track whatever market you want, they buy a basket of shares that comprise the market and hold them. Mutual funds are managed funds which try to beat whatever market they're working in, they trade in and out of shares in the market to try and gain an edge. Mutual funds typically charge higher fees to pay their managers and cover commissions. ETFs (exchange traded funds) are similar to index funds, except that they are traded like other stocks. There are other differences but I won't go into them.

On average, about 80% of mutual funds underperform index funds/ETFs after fees. If you can pick the 20% of mutual funds that will outperform the next year you should do so, however that's not easy for a number of reasons which I won't go into. Therefore you should be investing in index funds/ETFs. Mutual funds aren't a bad investment, they just underperform index funds/ETFs.


If you have a large number of buy-ins that you probably won't need but would like to keep as part of your bankroll there are many online banks which all pay fairly similar interest (+/- around 1% of each other), some people constantly move their money around trying to get the best rate, others don't want the hassle for the sake of marginal differences. You could also keep it in brick and mortar banks here too if the rates are better.

I'd recommend checking out www.askaboutmoney.com and 2+2's finance and investing forum. Another very useful site if you want to know what any of the jargon means is www.investopedia.com.

Cheltenham is next week...

I basically agree with what Red Joker said on equities, there are also other forms of investments - you could try fixed income products, most likely in the form of Bond ETFs, commodities such as gold or property