One of my goals in 2013 is to learn to invest. Investing is something I’ve wanted to learn to do for a while but I never really knew where to start. I’ve been saving money for a long time but that money hasn’t been working for me. Money sitting in a savings account is safe. It’ll be there until it’s spent, and it may earn around 1% or so, but most savings accounts don’t even really keep up with inflation anymore. In fact, many stocks barely keep up with the rate of inflation anymore.

One thing that I thought looked pretty interesting were binary options.  They are a bit different than standard investments because instead of purchasing a stock and letting it sit, you’re basically predicting where a stock will be in a certain amount of time. It’s actually a pretty cool concept. Instead of buying a thousand shares of a stock at $20 a share, waiting a year, and cashing out at $20.50 a share, seeing a net gain of around 2.5% you play the market it a completely different way. That same share that’s $20, if you think it could hit $21 by the end of the day then you would invest a set amount of money ($100 for example) and if that share hit $21, then you could score big, with a return of up to 10x your original investment in some cases. If it doesn’t hit $21, however, then you lose your initial investment.

This investment option keeps things interesting. Instead of planting money in one place and playing the waiting game, I get to take a few risks with my money with the promise that there could be an even bigger payout. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend that anybody only invest using binary options, a person needs to diversify. If investing in standard stocks is boring, however, I strongly argue for playing around with binary options. There is huge potential for profit if you learn the market.

I will say, however, that I am still in the ‘learning the market’ stage. I’ve been watching the markets and have invested small amounts of money, but I’m by no means an expert. Like I said earlier, I’m hoping this year is the year I finally get a good system going. I know it’s a lot of work and it’ll take a lot of studying, but I have a feeling it’ll pay off.