What does it mean to invest in potatoes?
"In order for a commodity to be offered as a future, the exact specifications must be specified by the exchange. This includes not only the particular grade, strain, etc (depending on what we are talking about) but also the exact delivery location (otherwise transportation costs is an issue as you noticed).  Once there is a standardized contract, the exchange can match up buyers and sellers who are agreeing to the terms of the contract.   From a fun little article on commodities: ... you will have to go either to Europe to trade European Processing   Potato futures on Eurex [...], or to India, to the Multi Commodity Exchange of India   (MCX). [...] On the MCX, two different types of potato are deliverable, ""Agra""   potatoes with the 3797 as its ""basis variety"" of potato and   ""Tarkeshwar"" potatoes with the Kufri Jyoti as its ""basis variety."" So let's look at an example, the Agra future contract on MCX.  It specifies  (size measured from at  least one side by way of  passing through sieve)   • Acceptable size 4–8 cm   • Rejected If below 4 cm and above 8 cm exceeds 5% ... and more details regarding the financials." comments discuss investing in potato futures. Learn / ready about commodity trading or commodity futures. An investopedia article How To Invest In Commodities is a good start.  There are quite a few commodities offered for normal trade or as futures. Potatos may not be offered on quite a few exchanges. Found some here Investing in commodities is fraught with quite a bit of risk, some like you have already pointed out. Of course you can't eat all and have to sell.
I'd say that the assets are 'invested' in non-productive sectors of the economy such as the finance sector. Also in pure market speculation and in revolving corporate acquisitions which inflate the nominal money supply but don't increase either physical production or services delivered by one thimble or one minute. "RBL is likely *reserve based lending*, which is a type of asset-based financing in oil&amp;gas world where debt is secured by oil reserves.  Presumably context is that have an oil&amp;gas company that the analyst thinks should be acquiring other companies.  To fund that, the analyst is saying the parent company should borrow money against their reserves (should be relatively inexpensive capital b/c asset-backed) and then using it to fund acquisitions.  For the target's capital structure, those amounts are equity infused by the Parent (even though the Parent got the money by borrowing it).  The Target can then borrow money against its own operations... this borrowed money will ""gear"" up the Target -- gearing is just a term for leverage, typically specifically debt-to-equity ratio.  So to fund the acquisition, the Parent is (1) going to borrow using a RBL on Parent's assets to come up with equity to put into target and (2) going to borrow against Target's business.  Presumably today Target is relatively debt free or even cash heavy." "This is what is called ""weasel words"". They're trying to put some authority into their ad, but since they don't have any - they're putting meaningless words that sound important. Monetary policy is the state/central bank policy to control the supply of the available currency. Cannot think of a way to connect it to private investments." "What does this mean and how do you do it? Consider that there are may be more than a few different objectives when it comes to investing: Each of these is a different objective that can have different timelines, objectives for the money as well as possible accounts and investment choices. In a sense the question could be stated as ""How much money do you need and when do you need it?"" Is it trying to figure out how much money you hope to have for   retirement, or does it include short term expenses The objective could be retirement but doesn't have to be. The short term expenses can be included in various ways. The retirement funds could include what kind of method would be used to make sure expenses can be met as if one is looking at retirement just a few years away the ""short term expenses"" may come up as part of the retirement living." "There's an old saying:  ""Never invest in anything that eats or needs maintenance."" This doesn't mean that a house or a racehorse or private ownership of your own company is not an investment.  It just points out that constant effort is needed on your part, or on the part of somebody you pay, just to keep it from losing value.  Common stock, gold, and money in the bank are three things you can buy and leave alone.  They may gain or lose market value, but not because of neglect on your part. Buying a house is a complex decision.  There are many benefits and many risks. Other investments have benefits and risks too." Investing in commodities is iffy in the best of times. Potash already has expectations priced in, so I prefer to play CNI, the railroad doing most of the hauling.  Uranium? No. Uranium has been touted for a decade or more without results. Thorium is the preferable future nuclear fuel, and there is lots of it. "Remind him that, over the long-term, investing in safe-only assets may actually be more risky than investing in stocks. Over the long-term, stocks have always outperformed almost every other asset class, and they are a rather inflation-proof investment. Dollars are not ""safe""; due to inflation, currency exchange, etc., they have some volatility just like everything else." Wine is often invested, as is whisky and some other spirits And fortified wines that have particular vintages, such as port. You need to be particular about which ones to invest in though.  Top vintages of wine and port can rocket in value, to make the big profits you need to buy the new vintage before everyone realises it is going to be a top year and sell it some years later when it is approaching its peak. This is obviously quite tricky to do.  It is fairly common to buy a share in a particular batch of whisky (proper Scottish single malt), then after 12-18 years when it is matured you can take your share in bottles or cash. "Debt is nominal, which means when inflation happens, the value of the money owed goes down.  This is great for the borrower and bad for the lender. ""Investing"" can mean a lot of different things.  Frequently it is used to describe buying common stock, which is an ownership claim on a company.  A company is not a nominally fixed asset, by which I mean if there was a bunch of inflation and nothing else happened (i.e., the inflation was not the cause or result of some other economic change) then the nominal value of the company will go up along with the prices of other things. Based on the above, I'd say you are incorrect to treat debt and investment returns the same way with respect to inflation.  When we say equity returns 9%, we mean it returns a real 7% plus 2% inflation or whatever.  If the rate of inflation increased to 10% and nothing else happened in the economy, the same equity would be expected to return 17%.  In fact, the company's (nominally fixed) debts would be worth less, increasing the real value of the company at the expense of their debt-holders. On the other hand, if we entered a period of high inflation, your debt liability would go way down and you would have benefited greatly from borrowing and investing at the same time.   If you are expecting inflation in the abstract sense, then borrowing and investing in common stock is a great idea. Inflation is frequently the result (or cause) of a period of economic trouble, so please be aware that the above makes sense if we treat inflation as the only thing that changed.  If inflation came about because OPEC makes oil crazy expensive, millennials just stop working, all of our factories got bombed to hades, or trade wars have shut down international commerce, then the value of stocks would most definitely be affected.  In that case it's not really ""inflation"" that affected the stock returns, though." "Investing in a business can be daunting and risky, so it is not for everyone. The most common pitfalls are mentioned here:  Beyond that:  It all sounds a bit like ""Don't trust anyone"" and sadly, this is true when there's a lot of money involved. So be prepared and do your homework, this sometimes will save you more money than you gain with your investments :) Good luck!" "I've mostly seen this term peddled by those with large portfolios in gold/commodities. The incentive for these guys, who for example may have a large portfolio in gold, is to drive demand for gold up - which in turn drives the value of the gold they're holding up and makes their assets more valuable. The easiest way to get a large amount of people to invest in gold is to scare them into thinking the whole market is going to fall apart and that gold is their best/only option.  I personally think that the path we're on is not particularly sustainable and that we're heading for a large correction/recession anyways - but for other reasons.  **Example:**  [Peter Shiff YouTube Channel called ""The Economist"" with conspiracy videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/PeterSchiffChannel/videos)  [Actual ""The Economist"" magazine researching the market](https://www.youtube.com/user/EconomistMagazine/videos)  (edit: formatting)" "Generally investing in index-tracking funds in the long term poses relatively low risk (compared to ""short term investment"", aka speculation). No-one says differently. However, it is a higher risk than money-market/savings/bonds. The reason for that is that the return is not guaranteed and loss is not limited. Here volatility plays part, as well as general market conditions (although the volatility risk also affects bonds at some level as well). While long term trend may be upwards, short term trend may be significantly different. Take as an example year 2008 for S&P500. If, by any chance, you needed to liquidate your investment in November 2008 after investing in November 1998 - you might have ended up with 0 gain (or even loss). Had you waited just another year (or liquidated a year earlier) - the result would be significantly different. That's the volatility risk. You don't invest indefinitely, even when you invest long term. At some point you'll have to liquidate your investment. Higher volatility means that there's a higher chance of downward spike just at that point of time killing your gains, even if the general trend over the period around that point of time was upward (as it was for S&P500, for example, for the period 1998-2014, with the significant downward spikes in 2003 and 2008). If you invest in major indexes, these kinds of risks are hard to avoid (as they're all tied together). So you need to diversify between different kinds of investments (bonds vs stocks, as the books ""parrot""), and/or different markets (not only US, but also foreign)." The term 'interest' tends to be used loosely when discussing valuation of stocks.  Especially when referring to IRAs which are generally the purvey of common-folk who aren't in the finance industry.  Often it is used colloquially to include: Using this definition (which is what I'm guessing your IRA Calculator is doing), your stock would have increased in value by a total of $26 over the course of 10 months.  Still not terribly good (only a couple percent increase), but certainly not a couple cents. Because so many businesses make some money through some form of compound interest, like a business that saves its earnings in a business account that pays interest, it heavily depends on how strict you interpret this law.  Some Muslims I know interpret it to mean directly and indirectly, while for some it's just direct interest earned. What I would suggest is either a direct investment in agriculture or a share in agriculture, where you are directly paid from your share in the investment and not through money that comes from a bank account earning interest.  If you do a direct investment in agriculture, like owning livestock, you will be paid money in the form of food, which compounds through reproduction and can sell the offspring to others and collect the money.  Year to date, agriculture is crushing the S&P 500 and many places around the world are facing shortages in food, like sugar and corn. If you don't have enough money for a direct investment, you can try the share route where you own a share of a direct investment.  Rather than go through stock exchanges, where many of these companies make money indirectly through interest also, you can negotiate directly with farmers, ranchers, livestock owners, etc.  Some of these individuals are looking to diversify their money, so they may be willing to let you own a fraction of what they produce and pay you directly. All of this comes with risk, of course.  Livestock and plants die for a variety of reasons, but none of it will be interest from lending whether to individuals or through a bank.  In addition, if we experience very high inflation in the future, livestock and plants do very well in this environment. The key to good investing is you need to understand what you are investing in. That is, if you are buying a company that makes product X, you need to understand that. It is a good idea to buy stock in good companies but that is not sufficient. You need to buy stock in good companies at good prices. That means you need to understand things like price to earnings, price to revenue and price to book. Bob