Aggressive Investment Strategy

  

Go big or go home, baby! Some suckers invest scared, worried that they'll lose all their money and end up eating cans of discarded cat food in retirement.

Other players go strong at everything with the highest possible payouts. Emerging market smallcap equity funds...distressed third-world debt...speculative tech and biotech venture funds...anything to make the largest amount of money possible, knowing that the risks of cataclysm are massive. Put it all on 22 and let it ride!

That second group is following an extreme version of an aggressive investment strategy. Real-life examples don't (usually) go that far off the deep end, but the idea is the same: find investments with the highest possible upside, with ideas like generating income or protecting their principal somewhere far down the list of priorities.

In practice, "aggressive" usually means owning more stocks and fewer fixed-income investments. It also means favoring higher risk equities, as opposed to dividend payers or shares associated with slow-growing industries. Generally speaking, this approach works best when an investor is young and any short-term reverses can be made up over time. As retirement gets closer, most advisors will steer clients to less-aggressive strategies, which emphasize protecting capital as opposed to growth.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is an Aggressive Growth Fu...67 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what is an aggressive growth fund a go-go fund

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and/or a high-octane fund ah yes investment funds have oh so many [People put sticker notes on investment fund file]

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labels there are income funds comprised mostly of bonds usually in high yielding

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dividend kind of stocks and you can buy them managed like in the form of a

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mutual fund or unmanaged in the form of an index fund there are growth and

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income funds usually a combo of stocks and bonds so in theory the funds value [Value tree appears]

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grows but it also throws off a lot of cash along the way then there are just

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growth funds notice the word aggressive isn't in there on the volatility

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spectrum well they live out here right-hand side of the bell curve when [Growth funds on right side of a bell curve]

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times are good they're very good when times are bad they're also not good in a

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good year a growth fund can be up 15 20 % maybe more in a bad year well down

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the same so now tack on the word aggressive in front of [Man puts aggressive label on investment fund file]

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that fund flavor and you can maybe double the volatility for the good and

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the bad and the high-octane fund is you know an allegory for gasoline on a fire [Man with gasoline tank by a fire]

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it can really roast you nicely and warmly in the cold night or it can well [Fire creates explosion and man runs away]

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do that so what do aggressive growth funds like these invest in you know go

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go aggressive let's go not just once but twice

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well they invest in typically risky volatile stocks a whole lot of

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technology stocks that are unproven small tech companies are regular

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favorite of this class is this little company the next Amazon in 20 years or [Woman sat at a computer desk]

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is it Pieceocrap.com well over long periods of time and

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inside of bull market era like decades where the market generally goes

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up like it has been since 2009 while aggressive growth funds might compound

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at 11 12 13 14 15% something like that whereas a bit more conservative

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just growth funds might only compound at 8 9 or 10% but those two

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percentage points of compounding actually matter a lot over the long-run

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remember that rule of 72 well take the compound interest and divide it into 72 [Rule of 72 on a 100 dollar bill]

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and that's how long it takes to double well it applies here as well the

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aggressive, in aggressive growth fund should in theory anyway add two percent

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in returns or reward in good times thanks in large part to the added risk

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taken in that category so 36 years pass and that aggressive growth fund all else

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being equal should be double of what a normal growth fund should be but with a [Aggressive and Growth funds marked on a graph]

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whole lot more volatility see that 2% divided into our little rule of 72 thing

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there well that's 36 years to double with that extra 2% so if you can handle

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the volatile, violent, flame field rocky mountain style peaks and volatility [Lava spews out of volcano]

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valleys of depression canyon and kill me now cave well then you'll love the view

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from Everest Lookout and punitive taxes peak if you're an investor like the

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wealthy and aggressive go go high octane funds yeah go go for it [Woman skiing on mountain and falls off the edge]

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