What is an investor?

Investors are people who want higher returns than bank deposit rates. To achieve this, they are prepared to take high risks in the hope of ultimately achieving higher returns. A wise investor always keeps in mind that he may suffer losses.

Where have you heard of investors?

Financial services advertising focuses on "retail investors", that is, individual investors who buy and sell securities, rather than large institutions. An "institutional investor" is an organization that invests on behalf of its members. For example, pension funds, hedge funds and mutual funds are all large investors and often appear in reports on large infrastructure projects.

What you need to know about investors...

Investors are often seen as people who support start-ups. Such investors do exist, but there are also investors who buy government bonds or stocks of mature large companies. Investors may be market amateurs, or veteran individual operators or well-capitalized investment firms with billions of dollars in assets under their names.

While most jurisdictions offer compensation to defrauded investors, they do not offer compensation to investors whose investments fail. Whether it is relatively safe assets such as bonds or speculation, there is always risk in investing.