Investment
This article is about investment in finance. For investment in macroeconomics, see Investment (macroeconomics). For other uses, see Investment (disambiguation). "Invest" redirects here. For the term in meteorology, see Invest (meteorology). In general, to invest is to distribute money in the expectation of some benefit in the future. For example, investment in durable goods, in real estate by the service industry, in factories for manufacturing, in product development, and in research and development. However, this article focuses specifically on investment in financial assets. In finance, the benefit from investment is called a return. The return may consist of a profit from the sale of property or an investment, or investment income including dividends, interests, rental income etc., or a combination of the two. The projected economic return is the appropriately discounted value of the future returns. Investors generally expect higher returns from riskier investm...