Its a brave man who invests a sizable portion of this wealth in the stock market these days. It seems that most of us have moved most of our money out of stocks and into cash or gold, unfortunately we didn’t get out of market before it had plummeted to depressingly low levels we see today.

So, having lost our shirt we are terrified of the markets and have decided its not for us and move to “safer” options which offer low returns but which hopefully will give us some sort of gains.

The reality is that investing in today’s stock market is a great idea if you can control your fear and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t can’t make excellent returns by putting a portion of your available funds in shares. The problem is where to put your hard earned cash. With things still being volatile its difficult to choose the companies which are going to do well in the next year or two. While the market as a whole may have reached its bottom its certain that many individual companies still have tough times ahead.

The answer this dilemma is simple and that is to invest in an index fund with tracks the market so that you are exposed equally between every company in the index. This is a long term plan to be sure but if you have the self control to regularly and consistently pay money into such an index fund it will pay huge dividends over a 5 to 10 year period.

So while the so called financial experts buy their head in the sand and tell you a different story every month, take the long term, safer approach and invest regularly in an index fund now so you don’t miss the inevitable rise in the markets.