Question

What are some of the different asset classes? Which ones have been some of the top performers this year? Which ones have been top performers over the last 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? Which asset classes are most volatile?

Answer 1

The main asset classes include:
   Shares: Also known as Equity Investments, represent the Ownership in a company.
   Bonds: Fixed Return or Interest Investments issued by a corporate or governments when they want to borrow money from investors. The pay fixed interest to the Investors with higher-risk borrowers paying more than lower-risk borrowers.
   Foreign Exchange: Includes the Foreign Currency, gains from the Currency market volatility conditions to receive Arbitrage or currency value appreciation.
   Commodities. Commodities include the range involving oil and gas; precious metals such as gold and silver; other valuable industrial metals and ‘soft’ agricultural commodities such as wheat, rice and soya.
   Property or Real Estate. The asset class includes residential or commercial, property having a promising record in providing a financial return that beats inflation.
   Cash: Includes the ready Cash (in domestic or foreign Currency) and highly liquid Cash Equivalents like coupons, Sodexo, etc. providing a useful benchmark for all investment. Cash also provides a safe haven for funds when markets are rocky or looking overvalued. Some funds also trade in currencies to boost their returns from cash when interest rates are low.
   Crypto-currency: It is a igital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank.

As compared to other Asset classes, Cash has remarkably done better in the last financial year, which is most by any other Asset Class. Real Estate or the Real estate investment trusts (REITs), Crypto-currency, Cash and Commodities, especially Gold also saw a net gain to a considerable value, compared to last financial year’s growth. Foreign inflation-linked government bonds and Stocks saw a slump in the prices as compared to last year’s growth rate.

Research suggests that the top performing asset class/classes is/are in constant flux, making future predictions a 'fool’s errand', new. Analysis of 13 different financial markets over the past two decades shows not one hit the best performer spot for longer than a year at a time. It pays to assume that diversification works and spread your portfolio across stocks, bonds, property, commodities and cash, says the financial services firm (source: Fidelity International Study).
Fidelity International studied 13 sectors to track the growth & relative performance of different classes, and a short representation of that would be as:

The asset classes which are most volatile include Real Estate, Stocks and Commodities.