Some of you have asked recently for thoughts on what/when to invest next.

Before that, let’s go back to basics.

Something I got from Tony Robbins’ last book, the most important thing is to sort out our income, growth and fun firstly.

I’ll run a blog or two sometime later to expand on these but for now: income is stuff that generates you cash without having to get out of bed; growth is what we talk about when we refer to share investment; and finally, fun is shorter term high risk and reward.

All of us dismiss this as either too simplistic or we think we have done it. When actually we haven’t. Honestly, its key.

Now, take your growth part and decide what to do with it.

I recently enquired after a few internet trading systems and took a look at some of the more popular trading magazines. Wow, you quickly get inundated. If its all that good why are they not billionaires?

The point is, most of the magazines and probably all of the trading systems are not for your growth but your fun. They are mostly short-term and reactionary. So, back to the beginning, let’s not get confused and put our growth stuff into short-term, high risk by mistake.

Growth is a nine-month view, and a few years reviewed six monthly is best.

Trying to judge your growth fund from the favourite magazines is almost like trying to decide the long-term weather forecast from the front page headlines of the Daily Express. It’s reactionary. At best it will get you in when you should be getting out, and at worst make you procrastinate with headline information overload.

Take your allocated growth pot of money and divide it into investment portions. (You are looking for the growth here. If from your favourite magazine you have the company with the latest oil exploration technique then this is not growth but the high-risk fun part).

With your growth portions: less is more. Look for reliable companies that are in areas that you think will continue to grow. One of my parts would be an index tracker of the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 (e-mini if I could get it). I would also save one of these portions to put into gold but not until mid-February. The same timing for an oil or oil associated company like Petrofac.

Shares will trend up this year. That is, the index will finish higher. But there will be a bit of ‘fun’ in-between.