Five good investment goals for 2024

Below, we explain the goals that an investor should consider:

Inflation is the investor's main enemy as it makes money lose value over time. It must be taken into account in any change in investment decision. This means that when choosing vehicles or changing positions, you need to identify financial products that can beat the price rise. In other words, its actual (non-nominal) return can exceed this macroeconomic indicator over a prolonged period of time.

This long-term vision also applies to protect yourself from another enemy: volatility. Intraday corrections are inherent to the markets, impacting an investor with no long-term vision. However, they are a window of opportunity to buy shares from quality companies at a good price, leaving room for the market to recognize its true value, which translates into potential gains.  A long-term vision has the effect of smoothing out these daily fluctuations in share price.

Plus, the more time you have to achieve your investment goal, the more aggressive you can be with strategies and, therefore, be more likely to generate returns.

Portfolio diversification is not only important in terms of assets (equities, fixed income, for example) and, within these, divided between different companies (both in different sectors and in different geographical areas) and between government or corporate debt, financial or non-financial credit, peripheral or core.

This third investment goal for 2024 is also key to distributing market inflows. When investing regularly, asset purchases are diversified, which allows you to buy at different prices, expensive and cheap. Again, this strategy offers greater potential for long-term appreciation and minimizes the impact of stock market volatility.

Among the different vehicles to channel the invested savings, the offer that guarantees the diversification recommended for the previous goal is covered by the selection of several stocks, investment funds or ETFs (listed funds).

These last two include a huge variety of products classified either by geographical areas or by investment trends that guarantee structural growth. This is the case with digitalization (artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud, etc.), and sustainability—understood not only as the path for companies to be more sustainable but also as the development of technologies to be more sustainable, such as hydrogen or mobility— or population change. The population's longer life expectancy means that sectors such as health, food, leisure or real estate are forecast to cover the needs of the so-called silver economy. One figure: in 2050, in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the life expectancy of someone aged 60 will be 87.9.

Just like how you visit a doctor when you're ill, or a lawyer when you have a legal problem, you should consult a financial advisor on how to protect and boost the value of your assets. These professionals help investors identify what type of product and/or asset is most advisable according to risk profile, investment objective and time horizon.

In a challenging environment full of opportunities, BBVA in Switzerland offers a consultancy service through its committed and specialized team, our greatest strength in developing the best private banking experience.