 TITLE: How to Make Money Without a Job CONTENT: Should You Start Investing?\n---------------------------\nInvesting has certainly been in the news this year, which has put a spotlight on scores of individual investors trading stocks for fun and maybe even profit. In fact, it's not just short-term stock trading that is in play: From Bitcoin to foreign exchange trading, investing has become a hot topic and a potential source of income among everyday people.\nCould this be for you?\nInvesting can be a valuable source of passive income, but it's also a risky way to make money. If you're intrigued by the possibility of making money on investments, be sure to take the time to understand the full range of options available and what their pros and cons might be.\nTraditional long-term investments—like the ones that help you save for retirement—deploy a few common tactics to reduce risk:\n*   **Diversifying investments**: A typical retirement or long-term investment fund contains a mix of stocks and bonds. You may further diversify by choosing mutual funds, which allow you to own many individual stocks and bonds in a single holding.\n*   **Leveraging time for stability**: Although the stock market fluctuates constantly, in the long term it trends upward. That's why timing long-term investments is less risky: It's easier to predict a long-term gain than to pinpoint what an investment will do in the next few days, weeks or months.\n*   **Being conservative in the short term**: Conservative short-term investments tend to be less volatile but may also yield less profit. High-yield savings accounts, for example, are designed to preserve your money, not make you rich overnight.\nShort-term trading doesn't really operate on these principles. Instead, they rely on quick wins that can be turned into bigger investments. Can you make money doing this type of trading? Potentially, yes. But you can also lose a lot of money, which is especially catastrophic if you're already in financial straits.\nIf you've considered all the risks and are still interested in this type of investing, you might first try your hand using a simulator and fake cash. Be prepared to invest a lot of time learning how trading works and keeping up with news about the market. Start small. Don't invest money you can't afford to lose. And be ready to track your earnings so you can pay taxes on them. END