Alternative Investment Strategies for 2015

Alternative Investment Strategies for 2015

Many of us are familiar with the traditional investment strategies.  These strategies can include things like buy and hold strategies in stocks, or even investments in government bonds.  These traders understand that long stock trade benefit with stock prices rise, just as bond investments benefit when interest yields accumulate.

But when we look at the current market environment, there are some other types of alternative investing strategies that should be considered.  For example, two of the biggest trends in the financial markets over the last few years has been the resurgence of forex trading and binary options trading.  To some, these strategies might seem intimidating or difficult to understand.  So, here, we will outline some of the ways these types of investments work so that traders can benefit from these methods in the current financial landscape.

Currency Markets  

First, we look at the currency markets which have recently started being referred to as the foreign exchange, or forex markets.  According to recent reports from ultimate4trading, some of the most common trading approaches of the last 10 years have dealt with the exchange rates between currencies.  When dealing with forex, you will generally run into currency pairs like the EUR/USD or the AUD/NZD.

In these two commonly traded examples, the value of the Euro currency is denominated in terms of the US Dollar.  In the second example, the Australian Dollar is pitted against the New Zealand Dollar.  Of course, just about any currency can be traded for any other currency, so there are many more examples that would be added to this list.  It should be remembered that all currencies are associated with a specific interest rate, and this is something that is finally factored in when profits and losses are tabulated.

Options Markets

The next market that we will look at is the binary options market.  In some circles, binary options get a bad rap as being highly volatile and overly risky.  But the reality is that binary options look to benefit in market trends in either the positive or negative direction.  Call options benefits when prices in an underlying asset start to rise.  In contrast, put options start to benefit when prices in an underlying asset start to fall.  Binary options can be applied to any asset class, so things like stocks, commodities, and forex can all be traded using binary options. In these ways, binary options offer a unique method for expressing an investment view in the financial markets.