Idle money is wasted potential. In the blink-and-miss 21st century, this thought has been echoed in several corners through out the globe.

Now-a-days, investing your money, or alternatively, making your surplus money ‘work’ has become an economic imperative. Moreover, the options where you can deploy your money have increased manifold— from traditional options such as real-estate and shares of companies to newer alternatives such as Futures and Options. Each of these investment options come with their own share of benefits and risks. According to each individual’s appetite for risk, the prioritization of these options may differ but the idea behind these investments has always remained the same— idle money is wasted potential.

Off the top of one’s head, ‘Investing in the 21st Century’ brings to mind terms such as Online Trading, Futures & Options, Equity Research and Share Market trading among others. These investment enablers and instruments have brought their own complexities, advantages and risks.

Let us consider the revolutionary phenomenon known as Online Trading. It essentially allows you to buy shares, sell shares and track the position of shares instantaneously. The ease, swiftness and security with which shares are bought and sold encouraged many investors to switch to this format. However, this burgeoning demand necessitated a compatible infrastructure. The lack of such infrastructure — as was the case in India—lead to a delay in trade executions, and ultimately, great losses in the already volatile stock markets.

Another investing phenomenon are ‘Futures & Options’. Futures and Options have undoubtedly become the two most widely publicized derivative instruments in the world today. A futures contract is essentially an agreement between a buyer and seller of an underlying asset. In a futures contract, the buyer agrees to buy and the seller agrees to sell the underlying asset at a price agreed upon now at a future date. Futures contracts are standardized contracts and traded publicly in an exchange.

The underlying investment in the futures contract may be a commodity such as wheat, oil, sugar, orange juice or cocoa. There are also futures that are tied to the performance of financial items in the marketplace, such as currencies, interest rates and stock and bond indices. An option, on the other hand, gives you the right to buy or sell the underlying asset but not any obligation, thus compounding the complexities of this option.

And of course, investing in the share market still continues to be one of the major investment options through out the world. The recent economic recession might have cast a shade over this investment option but the market cycle of boom and bust still proves to be an attractive as well as intimidating option for investors. However, this recession has also brought to prominence the role of ‘Equity Research’. The role of research is to provide information to the market. An ideal market relies on this fairly objective information as the uninformed void creates inefficiencies that result in stocks being either over valued or under valued. An equity research firm uses its expertise and spends a lot of time analyzing a stock, its industry and peer group to provide studied estimates about earnings and valuations.

With several, new financial instruments being tested, the options available for investing your money are still growing; only giving you lesser excuses for keeping your money idle, inactive, uninteresting.