6 Smart Investment Strategies for Superior Returns (2024)

There are a handful of time-tested investment strategies that tend to outperform over time.

Just as importantly, being able to assess market conditions and valuations, and choose the right investment strategy at the right time, lets you maximize your wealth’s growth potential.

This article will outline six major types of outperforming investments, what the strengths and weaknesses are that can be capitalized on at certain points in a business cycle, and how to put them together into a wealth-building strategy.

1) Equity Index Funds and ETFs

Index funds are investment vehicles that track major market indices, like the S&P 500.

Rather than trying to outperform, they merely match the market, but they do so at such low costs that they end up outperforming most actively-managed investment funds that charge high feesfor lackluster performance.

Usually, you’ll want to hold some stock index funds, some bond index funds, some international stocks including emerging markets, and maybe some alternative holdings like REITs, precious metals, and other asset classes.

The key is, you need to re-balance your index investmentsat least once per year, or use a service that automatically re-balances it for you.

Historically over long periods of time, equity index funds vastly outperform bonds, so it’s important to have a large exposure to them during most stages of your life.

Index Fund Advantages:

• Super easy to start with.
• Extremely low cost.
• Commonly available for 401(k) plans, IRAs, and other retirement accounts.
• Fairlyliquid and accessible if necessary, especially when not in retirement accounts.

Index Fund Disadvantages:

• Index rates of returnare likely going to be lower over the next 10-20 years than they have been historically.
• Index funds don’t necessarily produce reliable growing investment income tocover your expenses.
• You give all your shareholder voting rights to the indexing company.

How to start:

• I generally recommend M1 Finance as the best platform for most investors.
• If you already have a brokerage account, see what index funds your broker offers, or buy indexed ETFs from within your account.

2)Dividend Growth Investing

Passive investing via index funds is becoming more and more popular, and outperforms active management in most cases.

However, there are still some areas where index funds do not perform well, ordo not meet the needs of all investors. One of the biggest examples is in the specialization of dividend growth investing.

There are many companies in the United States that have not only paid dividends reliably, but have grown their dividends each and every year without fail for decades. Companies like Dover Corporation, Emerson Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Realty Income, and dozens of others, have incredibly long stretches of consecutive annual dividend growth.

In other words, even during recessions or when the stock market goes down, they keep increasing their dividends to shareholders.This is particularly important if you’re trying to live off of your investment income.

For example, during the 2008 financial crisis, the S&P 500 dropped over 41% from year-end 2006 to year-end 2008, but annual dividend income only dropped 21%:

When you invest in index funds, the common rule is to withdraw up to 4% per year, so that you’ll never run out of money. The problem is, the stock market can go up and down severely, so if you’re restricted to a certain percentage to withdraw, it means your investment income will fluctuate with the stock market. This year you might have $20k in investment income while next year you might only have $15k. If you withdraw more than 3-4%, you risk reducing your principle.

Even dividend-focused index funds haven’t been able to fully solve that. They’re great investments for overall growth, but they’re still notideal for producing reliable growing investment income. Just about any dividend index fund or ETF you look at, whether it’s the Vanguard High Yield, Vanguard Dividend Appreciation, or anything else, you’ll find that in some years the dividends go up, and in some years they go down a bit. They’re unreliable because they don’t have robust dividend stock selection criteria.

An investment strategy of using actively-managed do-it-yourself dividend growth investing can fix that, as long as you select a balance portfolio of the right companies.

3 Critical Rules of Successful Dividend Growth Investing:

• Only buy wide-moat companies with at least a decade of consecutive annual dividend growth.
• Diversify among several different sectors and with at least a dozen companies.
• Select companies that have a solid dividend yield (2-8% in most cases), solid dividend growth rate (4-15% per year or more), and low dividend payout ratio (under 80%).

It can be a lot to take up yourself, so it’s one of the areas where getting a low-cost reputable newsletter actually helps. A lot of investment newsletters on the market are garbage, but dividend growth investing is an area where there truly are some newsletter gems. You can save a ton of time and risk by letting experts curate a diversified portfolio of carefully-selected dividend growth stocks for you.

The goal isn’t necessarily to beat the market; it’s to produce reliable dividend income that grows every single year, even through recessions.

Dividend Growth Advantages:

• Very low fees (or zero fees in some cases) for buy-and-hold dividend growers
• Reliable passive income that grows faster than inflation and grows through recessions
• Dividend stocks historicallyhave a great risk/reward ratio

Dividend GrowthDisadvantages:

• Requires a degree of DIY investing, made easier with top-notch newsletters

How to start:

• Read this guide on blue chip dividend stocks.
• Then, read this guide on safe high dividend stocks.
• Consider a low-cost high-value dividend newsletter for curated investments and save time

3)Selling Options for Growth and Income

Selling covered calls and cash-secured puts is a great way to boost your income and reduce your volatility.

Unfortunately, investing with options is an investment strategy thatmany people assume is risky or time-intensive. While that’s true in some cases, the reality is that options give you more flexibility than just about any other investment.

You can use them to increase the potential for risk and returns, but you can also use them to decrease risk and produce cash flow, which is what I do. I make thousands of dollars of investment income per year by selling covered calls and cash-secured put options, while reducing my exposure to market corrections at the same time.

When you sell a put option, you take on the obligation to potentially buy a stock at a certain price before a certain date. And when you sell a call option, you take on the obligation to potentially sell a stock at a certain price before a certain date. In exchange for taking on these obligations, you get paid an option premium up front by the option buyer.

In other words, if you’re interested in buying stock of a great company but would prefer to wait for a lower price, you cansell a cash-secured put option to get paid to wait until the stock dips to the price you want, and then automatically buy it.

Option-SellingAdvantages:

• Historically outperforms equities on a risk-adjusted basis
• Produces reliable high investment income and growth
• Greatly reduces portfolio volatility

Option-SellingDisadvantages:

• Requires patience and a long-term focus
• Little excitement or big upward swings
• Is fairly advanced compared to other strategies on this list, but really not that hard

How to start:

• Read mytutorial on selling cash-secured put options
• Read my tutorial on selling covered calls
• Open a brokerage account that supports options, like Schwab or Fidelity

4) Real Estate Investing

One of the oldest and most reliable smart investment strategies is to build a portfolio of high quality real estate.

The reason it’s so powerful is that it can be leveraged rather heavily. For a relatively small amount of capital, you can control and profit from a large amount of real estate, because you can finance 70-90% of the cost.

And putting REITs in a Roth IRA is so tax-efficient it’s almost cheating.

Real EstateAdvantages:

• The assets are intuitive and long-lasting
• Can produce strong cash flow
• Provides opportunities for tax write-offs
• The market is illiquid and often inefficient, which can mean great returns

Real EstateDisadvantages:

• May require significant capital if you buy a property yourself
• Lower liquidity than most investments, unless you use REITs
• May require hands-on fixing unless you hire a property manager
• Usually requires leverage for decent returns

How to start:

• Check out crowdfunding real estate platforms
• Research rental property in your area
• Invest in REITs

5)Alternate Investments

There are some investments thatexist outside of the scope of other, more common investment strategies.

An obvious example through the ages is to invest in precious metals, either physically or with an ETF.

Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) may be considered a form of alternative investment. With them, you get to invest in pipeline companies and other natural resource businesses.

A more recent opportunityis to invest in peer-to-peer lending to produce reliable cash flow from a diversified portfolio of personal loans.

And an example of an alternative strategy I’m using, is that I generate income from selling put and call options on gold and silver ETFs. In the current environment of very low interest rates, I prefer this investment strategy compared to holding bonds in some of my accounts.

There really is no limit to the types of investments you can do. Some people can make a ton of money from coin collecting, or evenbuying and selling luxury watches in their spare time. You could buy a website and hold onto it for cash flow or to sell it at a higher price later.

Some of these can be really skill-based, and give you a competitive advantage for high returns.

AlternativeAdvantages:

• May be uncorrelated with equities and other investments in your portfolio
• Gives you more options for where to put capital
• Might be less efficient than other markets, leading to outsized gains

AlternativeDisadvantages:

• Requires additional and separate research
• Takes additional time

How to start:

• Check out peer-to-peer lending platforms
• Research precious metals
• Research MLPs and various types of trusts
• Identify skills you might have that you can leverage for investments

6) Entrepreneurship

The other five investment strategies on this list require upfront capital, and are great for turning money into more money.

But if you want to accelerate your wealth accumulation, you can also trade time to build a business, which you can then hold onto for cash flow or sell for a big capital gain. And depending on the business, you can also put a lot of capital in to get an amazing rate of return over a fairly short period of time.

In my senior year of college, I started a small online business, which eventually brought in a meaningful amount of passive income, and which I eventually sold to another company when I was 26.

It wasn’t a ton of money, but it gave me a boost to pay off my student loans and increase my savings on top of my engineer’s salary. More importantly, I was able to serve over a thousand customers, and learn valuable skillsthat I’ll have for the rest of my life.

I’m a big proponent of small businesses and side gigs. In this increasingly globalized world, itpays to be diversified and to have streams of income that you control, and it’s such a valuable project to take on in terms of personal development.

Only world-class investors like Warren Buffett can achieve 15%+ rates of return on stocks, but you have a much better chance of earning high returns like that through small-scale entrepreneurship.

EntrepreneurshipAdvantages:

• Can produce astoundingly high rates of return if successful
• Provides opportunities for tax write-offs
• Doesn’t necessarily require a lot of capital to start

EntrepreneurshipDisadvantages:

• Requires a ton of time and work upfront
• Significant chance of failure
• Has a high learning curve

How to start:

• Read everything you can about successful business
• If you’re starting online, buy a domain name and low-cost hosting to start
• Read my articles on saving money, wealth-building, and financial freedom

Putting it All Together

The advantage of employing multiple different investment strategiesrather than relying on just one, is that you can shift more capital to the best strategiesat the right times.

For example, when stocks are cheap, it makes sense to invest heavily in them. When real estate falls, it creates an opportunity to acquire a new property.

Many investments are highly correlated, meaning that when the economy is strong, they all do well, and when the economy slows down, they all suffer in price and value together. Fortunately though, there are investment classes that are not well correlated with each other, and that are even inversely correlated.

For example, gold historically tends to rise in price during recessions, when people get scared, which makes it largely inversely correlated with equities. The time to buy it is when it’s historically cheap, usually during the height of bull markets. Silver tends to fall in recessions but rise back quickly, and is only moderately correlated with equities and can fluctuate significantly in price compared to gold.

Real estate prices tendto decline during recessions, but typically not as much as equities, and recover more slowly.Investment-grade bonds and peer-to-peer lending can produce positive returns straight through recessions.

A smart investment strategy isto hold a diverse collection of different assets that are not well-correlated with each other, and invest into them when they become undervalued.

For more information on how to do that, read this article on contrarian investing.

Personally, I use discounted cash flow analysis, and monitor the CAPE and Cap/GDP ratio of the stock market, to determine how much to invest in equities compared to other investments.

When stocks are cheap, I invest heavily into them. When they get expensive, I still keep money in equities, but also seek out alternative investments to protect my capital and grow wealth outside of the stock market.

Related articles:

• From Dollars to Millions: How to Invest in Stocks
• How to Build Wealth- This Chart Shows What it Takes
• 4 Economic Bubbles Building in the U.S. Economy