Do I want to invest in commodities?

If I want to invest money (up to $5000), where can I buy commodities and stocks? Is there a way I can manage all of that from a single account? And how do I build a diverse portfolio?

• Also, what are investing strategies, and where can I educate myself more so that I don't lose all my money? I'm willing to go for medium-high risk with big payoffs, like Bitcoin

• Answer:

  With only $5000 its pretty much impossible to get direct commodity exposure as I'm not familiar with any online brokers that have margin accounts that are that small. There are however other ways you can get exposure to such asset classes: 1. Invest in commodity ETPs (some of them may be backed by the physical colateral while others may be backed by futures to get exposure, though you risk facing contango or backwardation depending on where the markets are going) 2. If leverage is what you're looking for you can invest in equity options, or options against certain indexes. Options give you the right but not the obligation to purchase an asset at a certain point in time. So for example, if you buy 1 Apple option contract with a strike of $450, an expiration of August, and an option price of $20, that'll mean that for $2000 you have the right but not the obligation to buy 100 Apple shares at $450. So for example if Apple shares are trading at $490 on or before August 15, you can buy $49K worth of Apple shares for $45k, as you paid $2k for the options this would mean an immediate profit of $2K. 3. Going back to ETF/ETPs you can also purchase certain type of products that have lower risk profiles, such as low volatility index ETFs or ETFs backed by fixed income products. If you're not willing to take on risk immediately, I would suggest opening a thinkorswim.com account and starting off with their paper money feature. It gives you the option to try and invest in different type of asset classes virtually, without having to put any money down. https://www.thinkorswim.com/tos/client/index.jsp