Building a safe portfolio means investing in a number of different asset classes, such that when one asset class is down, the others provide some stability. We look at the four most common asset classes are public equities, private companies, bonds, and real estate, and three less popular ones.

The market is made up of thousands of investors, bringing to bear hundreds of different investment systems (even a few naïve amateur investors have no system at all.) In this month's school's article we look at four strategies that have proven successful over several decades.

Of course no two investors apply the same strategy in the same way and there are literally hundreds of different ways each strategy can and is implemented by investors.

‘Bill Gates wouldn’t be a billionaire if he were in forest products’
- Anonymous.

The performance of the sector can have a bigger impact on your returns than the choice of company to invest in.