Why don't you put some money in mechanical futures trading through a system broker. You can trade a long term system like Turtle or Aberration this way.
I would have thought that #3 would be the popular choice. Learn to position trade...and throw all excess in there. peace axeman
I go with "Cash" REIT's (40% of excess profits), and Muni Bond Funds (30% of excess profits), and for the remainder I do aggressive growth Mutual Funds (30% of excess profits). This is what works for me real good. Only go with "Cash" REIT's though, do some research and you will see why. I was heavier in Muni Bond Funds until March of this year when I added a higher percentage to growth Mutual Funds. I do own some properties though, but I love to stay mostly liquid. I am not a very good landlord (to much of a hard ass).
When the market and the economy start to run again (????), I think I will start swing trading my investment portfolio. I think the hands on approach is much better than the passive investment approach.
A management company will do any size of rental property. They take 6-10%. The rate depends on the size of the building and if you have any other property with them.
Problem with real estate or rental properties is that the market has long cycles so your investment can underperform for a long period of time.
I am reminded of a quote from Rich Payne (yes, there is a Dick Payne) at Bright Trading who once told me: "I gave my wife an unlimited budget, and she exceeded it."
I have looked into stuff like Turtle trading, Aberration and I-Master... None of them coincide with with personality make-up... I am basically an intraday systematic discretionary trader (with some limited longer term stuff), and not a hardcore systems trader who is at the complete mercy of computer signals... I know that many say that a trader's evolution will eventually take him to systems trading, but I can't see that happening to me... additionally, such systems have been developed and backtested using daily data, but I am an intraday trader by mentality... even if I somehow mustered up the courage to move 100% to the daily timeframe, I would have issues with systems trading because of the lack of control... Now follows some specific comments on various systems... Regards turtle trading, I do not have the intestinal fortitude to give back a large part or all of my gains on a given trade... this is a prerequisite for the turtle approach... On Aberration, it has a prerequisite to participate in a large, well diversified portfolio... this is most definitely not my style... I have spoken with a few people about I-Master and I gather that it is a volatility breakout system... I also recall seeing some example charts of I-Master entry points and, without the algorithm, it was fairly obvious that volatility breakout principles were being used... as a new system devised by the guys who developed Aberration, it has become very popular very quickly amongst the systems trading community, as a result of some pretty decent near term performance... given the fact that there is no requirement to trade multiple markets on I-Master, I will reserve judgement on it for a while... but again, there is the issue of "can I twist my personality to trade the daily timeframe -- while still of course continuing to trade intraday for my consistent gains -- and can I submit to black-box decision-making?"... But I do wholeheartedly accept your underlying premise that, because there is no effort involved in systems trading (apart from the effort of agreeing to accept a computer's signals) and because decisions are made on a daily basis (not very time-consuming, or even not at all time-consuming if funds are managed on my behalf by a systems broker), systems trading has potential for the effortless utilization of excess funds and could be possibly used alongside income-generative discretionary daytrading...
Both Turtle and Aberration are not really black box system. Once you buy them you know the system. I-master also uses a portfolio of seven different index futures: S&P, Nasdaq, NYSE, Russell 2000, Russell 1000, S&P midcap, and the mini-ValueLine. As far as I know it is based on opening range breakout method. I agree with the issues involved in making that transition from discretionary trading to mechanical as I am struggling with the same issue as I researched these systems and is in the process of deciding on one of them. I think the point is compared to the returns which one can get by doing other things like real estate investment and most of the ideas discussed here These systems have historical track records which beat most of the other alternatives.