say you had 200k to invest today

I am at an age where I’m as far into the market as I want to be.
Just parked a bunch of cash in a CD for now

if I were younger I’d start buying real estate OR I would seek out a person or persons with a really great idea and offer them capital in return for a stake, shark tank style

I would keep it in cash until we are in the middle of a recession then dump it in stocks.

Depends on the timeline.

I'm a long-term believer in technology being the catalyst to continued growth and advancement so those would be my riskier bets.

I think Lyft, Uber, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple are all highly interesting US investments.

- Lyft/Uber - Forever changing the transportation landscape; I think they eventually one or both merge with another company as autonomous vehicle technology becomes commonplace
- Facebook - Instagram is at the center of cultural change driven by youth
- Google - Positioned at the center of everything
- Amazon - Positioning itself to be a one-stop-shop for everything at home (home automation/integration becoming integral); AWS as a cash cow that is hockey sticking with huge upside
- Apple - Concerned with the slow pace of true innovation but the closed-system gives it a wall and it still produces high-quality products; tons of cash available that it can enter into white space almost anywhere

The other place I'd consider very risky but long-term I believe will find upside is cannabis. The easiest way to invest here is through the MJ ETF which gives you broad exposure to the top players in the industry.

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Read "The 3 Fund Portfolio" and/or Rick Ferri's Core 4 portfolio books, buy tax efficient vanguard index funds in a taxable account and check back in 25 years for your millions.

If you're young and healthy, start with 80% total stock market index, plus your choice of allocation among total Bond and total international indexes for the remaining 20%, maybe add REITs or small cap if you feel like it. There's essentially no risk of underperforming with an index strategy versus trying to pick stocks. Active management cannot beat monkeys throwing darts at lists of stocks, let alone an indexing strategy.

Don't waste your time analyzing stocks because you're not going to beat full time financial analysts by asking message board posters for advice, and rental properties have lower returns, bigger headaches in my opinion and their limited tax benefit gets phased out pretty quickly if you're a high earner. I'm sure I'll be shouted down shortly but the reality of arithmetic, historical returns and tax regulations don't lie.

Index funds pay you dividends every quarter, they're liquid and tax efficient, require no maintenance and have only increased in value over the long term.

For my situation I would pay off my mortgage, invest the rest and be completely debt free.

I have about 200k parked in cash. Would like to push it into the market but won’t do it because we are buying a new house next summer

I would buy a 4 plex around a university and only rent out to grad students or professors.

If you pick a managed fund, just make sure you understand the fees.