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Mutual funds. CDs are worthless right now. Annuities I don't know much about but I can't imagine them paying out as much as equity-based mutual funds. If you're young, go with some aggressive funds and re-balance your portfolio as you get older to be more conservative. Or you can invest in a Target fund which essentially does the re-balancing for folks that plan on retiring by a target year. I need to invest more in the stock market but for now my $$ is better invested in small businesses.
A mix.
If you are young, then 100% stocks. Two mutual funds: USA and global.
Any large mutual fund company can help. Just make sure their fees are low. Check Morningstar for grades.
I think a mutual fund that invests in a mix of stocks and bonds is best. They are known as "balanced", "hybrid", and "asset allocation" funds...all different words for the same thing. They will lose money in bad years, but typically less than funds that invest purely in stocks. The better balanced funds come close to the performance of the stock market as a whole with less volatility. Some balanced funds, such as T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation, have actually outperformed the large company stock market with less volatility.
I wouldn't put an annuity inside an IRA. Sounds like a rip-off.
"Brokerage investments" is a very vague term. I don't even know what you mean by it.
Some good balanced mutual funds that you could buy and hold for decades would be:
Pick one of the 3 above funds. Add money to it regularly. Hold it for decades. Assuming our economy doesn't totally go down the toilet (which, unfortunately, is a very real possibility...but nothing you can do about it if it does), you will very likely do pretty well with any of these 3 funds above.
buy ones that go up, who cares if the total return consists of dividends or all capital appreciation. total return is total return no matter how it is made up.
I'd say an ETF like ticker SPY. Very low fee and tracks the S&P 500. That for US investments and ticker BIK for BRIC investments. Cheapest way to go and very few mutual funds beat the S&P and almost none do once you take the yearly fees out.
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