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In summary, I'm looking for an easy, medium- to long-term investment other than stocks, bonds, and CDs. Details below.

We're currently in a market situation where the major stock market indexes are within a few percent of their all-time highs despite terrible on-the-ground economic conditions. In my mind, this makes stocks a somewhat dubious investment, with potentially lots of bankruptcies forthcoming.

On the other hand, interest rates are at next-to-nothing. CDs are definitely not keeping up with inflation, and bonds...well, it seems like interest rates have nowhere to go but up (not in the immediate future, but eventually, driven by inflation if nothing else), which makes bonds a questionable investment at the moment as well.

Basically, I'm not sure what to invest in during a market like this. I'm looking for another class of investment beyond the three listed. A few notes, however:

  1. I want "easy" investments, click-and-forget style. So even though buying and renting a house might make a lot of sense in a low interest rate environment, it's more of a hassle than I want right now.
  2. Gold is not an investment, it's a bet on the future value of the dollar. Similarly with other individual currencies and commodities. (I don't know enough about commodity funds to know whether they should be tarred with the same brush or not.) I'm looking to make an investment, not a bet. (Yes, I realize that every investment decision is essentially a bet against the future, but I want something that can grow value in its own right, not just relative to inflation.)
  3. No short selling or similar market bets. Again, I'm looking for an investment, not a bet. I might think stocks are currently overvalued, but I don't claim to know whether the correction is coming in one month or twelve, or if it will come sharply or as a slow stagnation relative to inflation.
  4. The ideal investment(s) will perform at least moderately in a low interest rate, high stock price environment, as these conditions may well persist for some time.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

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  • Consider hedged equity positions so that you can have upside potential and limited downside. Consider investment grade preferred stocks averaging 5+ pct currently. If a low interest rate, high stock price environment persists for some time, you'll participate. Other than CDs, "easy" click-and-forget style low risk/good reward investments are unicorns.
    – Bob Baerker
    Aug 9, 2020 at 17:15

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Your other main option is property, via something like a real estate investment trust. Whether property will perform any better than other investments is dubious, though — the markets obviously don’t think that it will, or prices would already have been driven up to the point where it won’t.

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  • So, is this the correct answer? I'm fine accepting it if it is, but I would have thought that out of the thousands of financial instruments available there would be more options available. Would it be possible to improve/support this answer with links to articles indicating that these four options (stocks, bonds, CDs, and reals estate investment trusts) are the only ones, or at least the main four? I appreciate the answer, but right now it sort of comes across as an unsupported claim of somebody on the Internet.
    – Galendo
    Aug 31, 2020 at 17:42

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