How to invest in a specific market without investing in a specific company?
"You need to hope that a fund exists targeting the particular market segment you are interested in. For example, searching for ""cloud computing ETF"" throws up one result. You'd then need to read all the details of how it invests to figure out if that really matches up with what you want - there'll always be various trade-offs the fund manager has to make. For example, with this fund, one warning is that this ETF makes allocations to larger firms that are involved in the   cloud computing space but derive the majority of their revenues from   other operations Bear in mind that today's stock prices might have already priced in a lot of future growth in the sector. So you might only make money if the sector exceeds that predicted growth level (and vice versa, if it grows, but not that fast, you could lose money). If the sector grows exactly as predicted, stock prices might stay flat, though you'd still make a bit of money if they pay dividends. Also, note that the expense ratios for specialist funds like this are often quite a bit higher than for ""general market"" funds. They are also likely to be traded less frequently, which will increase the ""bid-ask"" spread - i.e. the cost of buying into and getting out of these funds will be higher."
Let's say you've got an idea for an instrument that could be used to hedge non-depreciating assets (commodities for instance) with benefits including getting rid of the basis risks associated with the futures market.  What would be some suggestions on how to market the idea without being left out of the loop? I work neither in a bank nor at a trading house, but as an analyst in the shipping sector and therefore don't stand to benefit directly from my own idea if I were to share it with a party that could make use of it.   Hope this is the sort of question that's within the scope of this thread. Any insight in how such issues can be dealt with would be much appreciated. "Yes, this is possible with some companies. When you buy shares of stock through a stock broker, the shares are kept in ""street name.""  That means that the shares are registered to the broker, not to you.  That makes it easy to sell the stock later.  The stock broker keeps track of who actually owns which shares.  The system works well, and there are legal protections in place to protect the investors' assets. You can request that your broker change the stock to your name and request a certificate from the company.  However, companies are no longer required to do this, and some won't.  Your broker will charge you a fee for this service. Alternatively, if you really only want one share for decoration, there are companies that specialize in selling shares of stock with certificates.  Two of them are giveashare.com and uniquestockgift.com, which offer one real share of stock with a stock certificate in certain popular companies.  (Note: I have no experience with either one.)  Some companies no longer issue new stock certificates; for those, these services sell you a replica stock certificate along with a real share of electronic stock.  (This is now the case for Disney and Apple.) With your stock certificate, you are an actual official stockholder, entitled to dividends and a vote at the shareholder meeting. If this is strictly an investment for you, consider the advantages of street name shares: As to your question on buying stock directly from a company and bypassing a broker altogether, see Can I buy stocks directly from a public company?" "You may want to look into robo-investors like Wealthfront and Betterment. There are many others, just search for ""robo investor""." "You want to ""begin building a nice portfolio"" comprised of ""real estate"" and ""solar and wind"".  There are ways to do that without starting your own solar power farm or buying giant wind turbines, or whole apartment complexes. They're called ETFs. They're diversified and it's unlikely that you'll use the entirety of your initial investment." I don't think investing in only one industry, which you may know well, is very wise. You may want to invest in that industry but you should not restrict yourself from investing solely in that industry.  There are many times when your chosen industry may not be performing very well and other industries are performing much better. If you restrict yourself to just one industry you may be either out of the market for long periods of time or your portfolio may show negative returns for extended periods of time. You may want to know an industry or a number of companies very well but do not fall in love with them. The worst thing you can do is get emotional about an investment, an investment is there to make you money not for you to get emotional about. Don't restrict yourself, instead look to maximise your returns with investments that are performing better at the time. Also VW has more brands, i.e. is more diversified This isn't necessarily a good thing for investing.  It makes the company less likely to go down, but it limits your portfolio.  For example, say you think that Hyundai is a good alternative to Volkswagen (VW) but really like Audi.  If you buy VW, you get some Audi but a lot more of the rest of VW.  Then if you bought Hyundai, you'd be overrepresented in that segment of the market.   Audi may not be structured uniquely, but it is still the only company selling Audi brand cars.  Perhaps someone thinks that those models will do well.  That person may think that Audi will do exceptionally well in its niche.   Having many brands isn't necessarily great.  General Motors had something like sixteen brands before declaring bankruptcy.  It only has twelve now.   Now, it sounds like you feel the opposite about it.  You don't particularly like Audi as a stock and like VW better.  Your reasons sound perfectly reasonable (I know little about either company).  It may even be that VW is the only one buying Audi stock, because everyone else has the same view as you. 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 "Hmm, this would seem to be impossible by definition.  The definition of an ""index fund"" is that it includes exactly the stocks that make up the index. Once you say ""... except for ..."" then what you want is not an index fund but something else. It's like asking, ""Can I be a vegetarian but still eat beef?"" Umm, no. There might be someone offering a mutual fund that has the particular combination of stocks that you want, resembling the stocks making up the index except with these exclusions. That wouldn't be an index fund at that point, but, etc. There are lots of funds out there with various ideological criteria. I don't know of one that matches your criteria. I'd say, search for the closest approximation you can find. You could always buy individual stocks yourself and create your own pseudo-index fund. Depending on how many stock are in the index you are trying to match and how much money you have to invest, it may not be possible to exactly match it mathematically, if you would have to buy fractions of shares. If the number of shares you had to buy was very small you might get killed on broker fees. And I'll upvote @user662852's answer for being a pretty close approximation to what you want." "There's several approaches to the stock market. The first thing you need to do is decide which you're going to take. The first is the case of the standard investor saving money for retirement (or some other long-term goal). He already has a job. He's not really interested in another job. He doesn't want to spend thousands of hours doing research. He should buy mutual funds or similar instruments to build diversified holdings all over the world. He's going to have is money invested for years at a time. He won't earn spectacular amazing awesome returns, but he'll earn solid returns. There will be a few years when he loses money, but he'll recover it just by waiting. The second is the case of the day trader. He attempts to understand ultra-short-term movements in stock prices due to news, rumors, and other things which stem from quirks of the market and the people who trade in it. He buys a stock, and when it's up a fraction of a percent half an hour later, sells it. This is very risky, requires a lot of attention and a good amount of money to work with, and you can lose a lot of money too. The modern day-trader also needs to compete with the ""high-frequency trading"" desks of Wall Street firms, with super-optimized computer networks located a block away from the exchange so that they can make orders faster than the guy two blocks away. I don't recommend this approach at all. The third case is the guy who wants to beat the market. He's got long-term aspirations and vision, but he does a lot more research into individual companies, figures out which are worth buying and which are not, and invests accordingly. (This is how Warren Buffett made it big.) You can make it work, but it's like starting a business: it's a ton of work, requires a good amount of money to get going, and you still risk losing lots of it.  The fourth case is the guy who mostly invests in broad market indexes like #1, but has a little money set aside for the stocks he's researched and likes enough to invest in like #3. He's not going to make money like Warren Buffett, but he may get a little bit of an edge on the rest of the market. If he doesn't, and ends up losing money there instead, the rest of his stocks are still chugging along. The last and stupidest way is to treat it all like magic, buying things without understanding them or a clear plan of what you're going to do with them. You risk losing all your money. (You also risk having it stagnate.) Good to see you want to avoid it. :)" In theory you can buy shares directly from someone else who owns them. In practise, if the stock is listed on an exchange, they are unlikely to own them directly, they are likely to own them through an intermediary. You will have to pay fees to that intermediary to transfer the shares to your name. There are thousands of small companies owned by the guy who started it and a few other investors. You can buy stock in that kind of company directly from the existing owners, as long as they are willing to sell you some. It's a super-high risk investment strategy, though. This is the kind of deal that happens on Dragons Den. "Mutual funds invest according to their prospectus. If they declare that they match the investments to a certain index - then that's what they should do. If you don't want to be invested in a company that is part of that index, then don't invest in that fund. Short-selling doesn't ""exclude"" your investment. You cannot sell your portion of the position in the fund to cover it. Bottom line is that money has no smell. But if you want to avoid investing in a certain company and it is important to you - you should also avoid the funds that invest in it, and companies that own portions of it, and also probably the companies that buy their products or services. Otherwise, its just ""nice talk"" bigotry." "Simply put, you cannot deterministically beat the market. If by being informed and following all relevant news, you can arrive at the conclusion that company A will likely outperform company B in the future, then having A stocks should be better than having B stocks or any (e.g., index based) mix of them. But as the whole market has access to the very same information and will arrive at the same conclusion (provided it is logically sound), ""everybody"" will want A stocks, which thus become expensive to the point where the expected return is average again.  Your only options of winning this race are to be the very first to have the important information (insider trade), or to arrive at different logical conclusions than the rest of the world (which boils down do making decisions that are not logically sound - good luck with that - or assuming that almost everybody else is not logically sound - go figure)." "Don't do it until you have educated yourself enough to know what you are doing. I hope you won't take this personally, but given that you are wandering around asking random strangers on the Internet how to ""get into investing,"" I feel safe in concluding that you are by no means a sophisticated enough investor to be choosing individual investments, nor should you be trusting financial advisors to choose investments for you. Believe me, they do not have your interests at heart. I usually advise people in your position to start by reading one book: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. Once you've read the book by Malkiel you'll understand that the best strategy for all but the most sophisticated investors is to buy an index fund, which simply purchases a portfolio of ALL available stocks without trying to pick winners and losers. The best index funds are at Vanguard (there is also a Vanguard site for non-US residents). Vanguard is one of the very, very, very few honest players in the business. Unlike almost any other mutual fund, Vanguard is owned by its investors, so it has no profit motive. They never try to pick individual stocks, so they don't have to pay fancy high-priced analysts to pick stocks. If you find it impossible to open a Vanguard account from wherever you're living, find a local brokerage account that will allow you to invest in the US stock market. Many Vanguard mutual funds are available as ETFs which means that you buy and sell them just like any other stock on the US market, which should be easy to do from any reasonably civilized place." As a corollary to this; the average investor will never know more than the market. Buffett can buy mispriced securities because he runs a multi-billion dollar company dedicated to finding these mispricings.   My advice for the common man:  1. Invest in both Stocks (for growth) &amp; Bonds (for wealth preservation) 2. Stocks should be almost exclusively Index Funds  That's it.  The stock market has a 'random walk with a positive drift' which means that in general, the market will increase in value. Index funds capture this value and will protect you against the inevitable BoA, AIG, Enron, etc.   It's fine to invest in index funds with a strategy as well, for instance emerging market ETFs could capture the growth of a particular region. Bear ETFs are attractive if you think the market is going to hit a downturn in the future. I wouldn't recommend trying to chase a good return on this money.  I'd just put it into a savings account of some sort.  If you can get a better interest rate with an online account, then feel free to do that.  I'd recommend using this money to pay for as much of college out of pocket as you can.  The more student loans you can avoid, the better. As @John Bensin said, trying to make money in the stock market in such a short time is too risky.  For this money, you want to preserve the principal to pay for school, or to pay down your loans when you get out. If you find you have more money than you need to finish paying for school, then I'd suggest setting some aside for an emergency fund, setting aside enough to pay your loans off when you're out of school, saving for future purchases (house, car, etc), and then start investing (maybe for retirement in a Roth IRA or something like that).