Investment Opportunity Analysis (2025)

You've probably heard that the two main enemies of the investor, among many others, are inflation and costs. Finding a high-yield investment option isn't all that difficult if you can protect yourself against the former and keep the latter as low as possible. The 100-year average return on the US stock market was about 9.5%, but in the last few years it has risen significantly higher. Let's put costs aside for a moment and look at the investment options that protect against inflation.

💹Investment options that protect against inflation💹

Inflation can be built into a financial instrument in two ways: if the activity itself is capable of increasing the price of the product or service produced by the rate of inflation, or if its availability and quantity are finite, so inflation does not reduce its value. A good example of the first is a company that produces a product or service, you can primarily feel the price increases in the pricing of their products. The second group is, for example, precious metals or land, since there will never be more of them, and the extraction or use of new “portions” is becoming increasingly difficult. Since no new quantity of them is ever produced, and in fact the opposite happens, their pricing will increase over a decade. I will leave aside Bitcoin and other blockchain-based solutions here, because within this category we can talk about countless, completely different assets. Many of them can also be considered investments in the traditional sense, but I will discuss this in another article. In principle, these are the ones that come into question:

• 🌍farmland
• 🏢real estate, which if you break it down, you actually get different products that companies produce
• 🧾bonds
• 🪙precious metals, primarily gold
• 🏭shares, i.e. ownership of a company

All investment options, except stocks, have problems that you should be aware of:

• 🌍Farmland: it is not liquid, meaning it cannot be quickly converted into money, and it also has to be cultivated, which requires considerable expertise. Most states regulate buying and selling quite strictly. Another risk is that it is constantly exposed to unpredictable weather, which you have very little control over, and it requires a lot of capital to purchase and cultivate, think of machines for example. However, it also has interest and yield, these are the crop and the change in value. You can also physically touch it, look at it, etc. It is difficult to classify it as an investment opportunity, it is more of a profession and a way of life to cultivate the land, but for those who would like to plant a forest and plan for the long term, it is worth thinking about it.
• 🏢Real estate: is also not liquid, it also requires a lot of capital, and its renovation costs are significant every 10-15 years. Among the investment options, this is another instrument that has interest, for example in the form of rent, and also a yield, which is the change in value, and this is also a physical thing that you can see with your eyes, etc. It is particularly popular in Eastern Europe, for example in Hungary and Romania 90+% own their own property, and 80% of people mention this as the first investment option. In Western Europe and the USA, the rate is much lower, in Germany only 55% own their own property.
• 🧾Bond: is nothing more than a debt security. If it is issued by the government, it is called a government bond, which is also a very popular investment option. In America, they are available under the names T-bill, T-note and T-bond, with some differences in their maturity and operating principle. Government bonds usually yield a few percent above inflation, if they are inflation-tracking, but they can also be fixed. If issued by a company, they are called corporate bonds. The bond pays interest on its face value and also has a price quote, so if you do not hold the bond until maturity, but sell or buy it on the market, you may suffer a price gain or loss.
• 🪙Precious metals, primarily gold: Gold can be liquid, but it is more of an insurance than an investment. It doesn’t pay interest, it is extremely cyclical, it is brutally expensive to store in physical form, it is difficult to cut gold bars, etc., so it is not the easiest investment option to manage. Of course, you can also buy gold and silver coins, they don’t need to be cut, and they are easier to pay with. In the long term, gold has been a good tool to protect against inflation and reduce the volatility of various portfolios, as it has a relatively low correlation with the stock market. It is traditionally used as a “safety reserve”, so when money flees from, say, stocks, it often heads for gold, but its past long-term performance has been roughly in line with inflation.

📘 What does correlation mean? What is the correlation between individual investment options?

Correlation is a statistical indicator that shows in which direction and to what extent the values ​​of two assets move relative to each other.

• +1: completely positive correlation, the assets move together, e.g. if one increases, the other also increases.
• 0: there is no correlation, the assets move independently of each other.
• –1: complete negative correlation, the assets move in opposite directions, i.e. if one increases, the other decreases.

📊 Examples of correlations between certain asset classes (based on general trends):

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR COUPLES	Typical correlation	What it means?
Share – Bond	-0.2 - 0.3	Slightly negative or neutral: good diversification.
Share – Gold	-0.3 - 0.1	Slightly negative or zero: gold is an escape tool.
Stock – Oil	0.3-0.6	Moderately positive, depends on the industry.
Stock – Cryptocurrency	0.5-0.9	Highly positive, especially after 2020.
Gold – USD (dollar)	-0.5 - -0.8	Strongly negative: dollar weakening → gold strengthening.
Stock – Inflation	variable	Negative in the short term, neutral/positive in the long term.

🏭Corporate shares: is nothing more than a security that embodies ownership rights. It can pay interest in the form of dividends, but this is not necessary, and it can also achieve exchange rate gains and losses. The best thing about it is that it can be “substituted” for other assets, for example, if you buy a company that owns gold mines, you have replaced gold among the investment options, since the exchange rate of such companies correlates with gold. Real estate as an investment option? Buy shares of real estate management companies, which move with the value of the properties and typically pay dividends, which in this case arise from rental fees.

💡Learn all about investment opportunities💡

I didn't know much about the above instruments and how they worked, so I had a hard time deciding what to invest in. I put together a list based on my own experiences, where I started when I started learning about finance, and primarily stocks.

❗IMPORTANT❗ If you don't have the determination and perseverance to learn, you will invest blindly, practically relying on others, based on hearsay and tips. NO ONE but you will care whether you know what you need to know or not. 

You could start selecting investment opportunities without understanding the basics, this is called speculation or gambling. “Do you know how you can make some money on the stock market? You start with a larger amount and it’s guaranteed to get smaller”. If you don't want this proverb to be made about you, then at least try to learn the bare minimum about investments.

The best way to learn is to read forums, e.g. Reddit, watch videos/courses. I don't think in-person courses add much to this, but they are much more expensive and time-consuming. However, pay close attention to one thing: if you buy a course, read what people think about the provider. There are a lot of people selling courses who offer questionable knowledge at high prices, but in reality they are just summarizing what is already available online.

It is an undeniable fact that courses cost money, like everything in life. In return, you will not stumble upon expensive mutual funds, unit-linked insurance, and lose a lot of money on costs. You will not be sold unnecessary products by your personal banker and broker, who by chance do not even play on the same team as you, but are interested parties, as they receive commissions for product sales and for trading as often as possible.

📝International resources for analyzing investment opportunities📝

I don't have experience with all investments, but I have held government securities many times and have built a stock and startup portfolio. Buying land and real estate is quite complicated, with as many regulations and contracts as there are states, so I wouldn't share my experiences in this regard.

🪙When it comes to gold as an investment, I think the rule of thumb here is:

• only buy from a reliable source
• Never buy jewelry! Half of the price of jewelry is the goldsmithing, if they melt it down, this value is lost! You usually can't sell these for a good price.
• Buy gold in small enough quantities, but not too expensive, so that you don't have to cut it up later. You won't be able to exchange a large gold bar for 1 kilo of bread and a sausage.
• Accept that gold is a store of value and it is relatively difficult to make a lot of money with it in the long term, i.e. over decades. It is not really an investment opportunity, but rather a kind of escape currency, people buy it as collateral because of its store of value role.

When it comes to gold, it's worth playing out a scenario in your head about what would happen if you had to move the gold for some reason, for example, you had to flee because of a war? First question: where did you store the gold? In a safe that no one would open for your pleasure because of a war? At home, taking the risk of being robbed? Will you install a safe in your house? How will you move a lot of gold? Currently, 1 kilo of gold is worth $72150. You won't be able to break it up and pay with it, which is why I mentioned the gold coin as an intermediate solution. However, you can buy products on the stock exchange that indirectly track the movement of gold, such as ETFs, which are JustETF You can also check on the page. In the case of ETFs, they also indicate whether the instrument is actually hedged with physical gold or not.

💡To sum up: it's quite tricky to hold gold, you're better off holding some cash, diversified across different currencies.

🧾Government bond: as an investment, it is one of the simplest and most problem-free instruments. You can usually check the details on the dedicated website of the given state. This is not a particularly complicated task, and since the conditions change relatively quickly, it is worth inquiring on these sites. Always read the prospectus of the given government bond, because it may contain conditions, such as redemption percentage, interest credit method, and variable interest rates may be tied to several things that you have not thought of before. Government bonds are basically recommended for those who prefer security rather than yield. The state cannot go bankrupt in its own currency! It is also very unlikely that the US economy would collapse overnight, so this is a very reliable investment opportunity. I think corporate bonds are far from the average investor, they are not even popular in Europe, they are more of an institutional instrument, so I will not discuss them.

In Hungary, the allampapir.hu You can find the details of each government bond on page , and I definitely recommend that you read the accompanying prospectus carefully, because the terms and conditions sometimes change. There are government bonds that you cannot buy from the state treasury, because they are basically offered to foreign or institutional investors. However, you can access these on the Interactive Brokers platform, because it has access to the Budapest Stock Exchange, the BSE.

🏭Corporate shares: is the investment instrument with which most people identify the stock market. This is probably the one you need to read the most about, and the most complicated to understand. Some English knowledge is also required for this, but in the age of AI, you can use any translator. If you want to simplify, buy an exchange-traded fund, or ETF, that covers the entire stock market. For example, the S&P 500 ETF with the VUAA identifier, which covers the entire American S&P 500 stock market index. If you want to select individual stocks, you will need many sources, I mainly use the following:

1. The company's website: Look at what the company does and how it claims to be doing, and how up-to-date the data is. It's great for getting a general idea.
2. Investor Relations: Continue here if you want to know something about a company. Read the quarterly reports and listen to what management has to say, look at the 10K reports they file.
3. Substack: It has a lot of analysis on companies. The search engine is terrible, search Google for: substack+company ticker+name. Sort by date backwards, so the most recent is at the top, and read. Many sites are paid, but there is usually a trial version for a few days.
4. Seeking Alpha: It's a paid site, like Substack, only worse. It has a lot of "money-making" features and superficial analytics.
5. The Falcon Method: English premium newsletter, with a Hungarian supplement, produced by Dávid Sólyomi and his team. I think there is currently no better quality fundamental stock analysis than this, even in an international context. It requires some basic knowledge and a certain attitude towards investments.
6. Data sources, screener programs: There are countless stock selection sites that you can use to filter through them. The best ones in my opinion are Finchat.io, Gurufocus, AlphaSpread, iO Charts, finviz, Stock analysis, Simply Wall Street, but of course you can use any other one.
7. SimplySafeDividends: Anyone who invests with a dividend focus should take a look.
8. Reddit: Sometimes you can glean a surprising amount of information from forums. You have to be careful with Reddit, because it's incredibly noisy, but it offers a wealth of investment opportunities for those who like to delve into the conversations a bit.
9. iO Charts.io stock analyses: I write these analyses occasionally, and I try to present each individual company to you in exhaustive detail.

🔴⚪🟢Investment opportunities for Hungarian investors!

In addition to the above, Hungarian investors also have some native language sites that are worth checking out. At the time, I started my learning with the resources below, and I roughly listed how I progressed:

• Calculator Academy on Youtube: Created by Miklós Csernok, who kiszamolo.hu page and its associated blog owner too. He explains the basics very well, stocks, bonds, gold, unit linked insurance, etc., but the course itself is quite long, you have to get through the beginning. For me, it became interesting from the end of the first chapter, but after that it stays that way throughout. It's worth reading his page as well, you have to get used to the style.
• Free from Dividends: although this is the title of a book, it captivated me so much that I read it three times. The author is Dávid Sólyomi, who in my opinion is the most qualified and best individual stock investor in our country, if we look at fundamental analysis. His website is DividendPortfolio, its services are The Falcon Method English-language newsletter, which also includes Hungarian videos. Their additional service is Intelligent Investors, which is also Hungarian, I am also a subscriber to it.
• Analysis Center: It is written by Attila Nagy, the articles are good, dry, but very to the point. What he is very strong in is his courses, he provides diverse knowledge at an amazingly cheap price. From there, I recommend the investment package, it is quite solid material, you can easily get by with it for half a year. In fact, the materials on value-based investing and cryptocurrency are not bad either, and he updates them periodically.
• Lazy port: The author is György András, I think he got the title from the book “The Lazy Portfolio”, which he also wrote. It’s a basic work, read it. He is a great expert on ETFs, so anyone who would like to move in this direction should read it. The blogYes, he's eclectic, but he doesn't write there very often.

🔴⚪🟢Other non-equity resources for Hungarian investors!

• Shrink.ch: interesting startup site, and also deals with P2P investments, unfortunately this is not legal in Hungary, for now. The gentleman also publishes his stock portfolio. He writes rarely, mainly on startup topics.
• Option Guru: Gergely Nagy, alias Option Guru Gery, is the only source in Hungary that deals with option investments at a sensible level. I HAVE NOT TRIED it, but many of my friends have, and they love it. His courses are good, but expensive.

Summary of investment opportunities

Above, I presented possible investments that you should consider. Not all investments are for everyone, focus primarily on what you understand and what you sleep well with. If you are constantly anxious, then it is better not to hold that asset. Reading and continuous learning will help strengthen your convictions, but if you do not want to spend many hours on stock analysis, for example, then stick with government bonds or ETFs.

---

Legal and liability statement (aka. disclaimer): my articles contain personal opinions, I write them solely for my own entertainment and that of my readers. iO ChartsThe articles appearing on this website do NOT in any way exhaust the scope of investment advice. I have never intended, do not intend, and am unlikely to provide such advice in the future. The information provided here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be construed as an offer. The expression of opinion is NOT a guarantee to buy or sell financial instruments. You are SOLELY responsible for the decisions you make, and no one else, including me, assumes the risk.