If you’ve paid any attention to the stock market over the last two years, then you probably know that things have changed.

Apps like Stash and Robinhood have brought millions of new people to investing that would have never been able to put their money in stocks without the new technology and lack of commission for making trades.

Cryptocurrencies have soared in popularity to the point that they represent a viable — if controversial — alternative to the stock market.

And industries that were virtually unknown or still in their infancy just a few years ago, like streaming services, virtual reality, and FinTech, have now become global forces receiving billions of dollars in investment.

As we look to 2022, the investing landscape is more complex than ever before, yet it’s simultaneously a year that could prove more advantageous to smart investors than any other in recent memory.

Or as Barron’s put it: “As these phenomena follow us into the new year, so too will an investment sector that has experienced continued innovation as new, and newly accessible, tech platforms and products transform the financial services landscape and contribute to positive change in how we invest—as well as who is investing.”

Here are some of the investing trends for 2022 that you need to know.

Metaverse

Facebook’s name and brand change to the Metaverse prompted millions of people to hop on Google and find out what that word actually means.

The idea of a fully-integrated virtual world has long been the stuff of science-fiction, like Stephen Spielberg’s adaptation of “Ready Player One” just a few years ago. While many video gamers have understood the concept for years, the rest of the public is more tentative in their understanding and support.

The reality is that the metaverse is still in its infancy, whether we’re talking about Facebook or the many other companies working to create their slice of the coming virtual world. But that’s also exactly why investors who invest now could see massive returns in the near future.

A lesser-known example would be AMPD Ventures, which received $6.94 million from Canadian company ThreeD Capital Inc. in November 2021 for its Metaverse initiatives.

“My feeling is that we are in the midst of a digital acceleration, and this way of life will be with us indefinitely,” Sheldon Inwentash, CEO of ThreeD Capital, said in an interview with Finsmes.com.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Another trend that skyrocketed in 2021 was DeFi, or decentralized finance. Long seen as a less-interesting trend compared to cryptocurrency, DeFi received a whopping $260 billion in investment during 2021, making it a serious new contender for investors looking for ground-floor opportunities.

The industry’s growth has primarily been driven by new DeFi applications, including apps aimed at derivatives, insurance, the lending and borrowing of virtual assets, as well as the management of crypto assets.

The industry’s growth has also relied on stablecoins, a form of crypto utilized mostly by liquidity pools trying to make trading more convenient. DeFi apps increasingly use stablecoins to address the volatility in crypto markets — a major selling point for investors.

Cannabis and Psychedelics

Despite the disappointment among cannabis investors that US President Joe Biden’s administration hasn’t made any moves on the federal legalization of cannabis, 36 states now have some form of legalized marijuana, despite Cannabis cyber liabilities.

Even without changes at the federal level, that means investors can expect the US cannabis industry to grow by double-digits for the foreseeable future.

Additionally, Canada has legalized some psychedelics, mainly psilocybin, and at least one US state, Oregon, has done the same. The medical potential of psychedelics is just beginning to be understood, but they have already shown major potential for treating alcoholism, depression and other mental health problems that currently have few effective treatments. It’s another industry with huge potential.

These are only a few examples of the many emerging investment trends of 2022. Keep doing your research! With enough homework, you should be able to find investments that go the distance.

Feeling frustrated with your investing? You’re not alone.

Hundreds of thousands of people decided to start investing in the last few years, and most of them have no idea what they’re doing beyond suggestions from anonymous users on Reddit.

The doors to investing have opened up to the world beyond Wall Street, and now many novice investors have yet to see any significant returns from their investing, making it clear that maybe those masters degrees in business were worth something after all.

That doesn’t mean you have to have an MBA to successfully trade on the stock market. It does mean that you have to do your homework and stop viewing trading as just “a hobby.” Taking a relaxed approach to trading is fine — as long as you don’t care about profits.

But if you’re trading to help build a brighter financial future for you and your family, then you have to view trading like a job. You have to put in the hours and you have to show up every single day.

So what does taking a serious approach to trading look like? So glad you asked. Here are three of the best ways you can level up your investing game — right now.

Make A Plan

Do you have a plan for how you are going to trade this month? No? Well, that’s a problem.

If your trades are made on random variables or daily mood swings, then the results of your trading will look the same: unpredictable and inconsistent.

By making a plan for each week and month, your progress can be tracked, allowing you to draw conclusions about what strategies are working and which ones are not working.

You want to explore relevant charts and choose specific entry points for your trading. Rinse and repeat until you have a long list of entry points for your strategy. Stock trading necessitates agility and timing. Keep practicing with these entries until they happen exactly when they are supposed to. You’ll get there eventually.

Embrace Structure

The financial ecosystem is complicated. It was made that way.

The only path toward expert understanding of how to navigate this system is through a structured approach to trading. That means showing up at the same time every day, like a “real job,” and embracing a disciplined approach to learning.

Matt Choi, who runs the trading education site Certus Trading, said a lack of structure sets up new traders for failure.

“After a while, I realized that the biggest reason why traders haven’t been successful is because they lacked structure in their trading,” Matt Choi said. “They’d be trading stocks today, and then jump to commodities tomorrow. They’d get distracted listening to financial news networks, which often contradicts their own analysis. They didn’t have a plan and if they did have one they weren’t disciplined enough to follow it.  And as a result there is a lot of analysis paralysis going on, and they just can’t move forward with their trading.”

Update Your Plans Regularly

Once you’ve made a plan and followed it for a month, you have enough hard data and experience to start making updates to how you trade. Then, you take those slight changes to your approach and practice those for another month.

This monthly approach avoids making decisions based on isolated incidents, like individual trades, and focuses on the macro results that give you a better picture of what strategies really perform.

As the Corporate Finance Institute wrote, it’s all about “discipline and patience.”

“Discipline and patience are two very closely related skills that every master trader needs – in abundance,” according to their article “Six Essential Skills of Master Traders.” As we mentioned above, staying in the game is important because it allows you to experience both the highs and the lows, learning from them and making the necessary adjustments to your trading. A master trader must be both patient and disciplined in order to stick with it, especially on days when profit is non-existent.

Smart traders tackle one problem at a time. Start each day with a simple goal and make sure you complete that goal. With that kind of mindset, you should find yourself improving your trading — and understanding why.

If you need money urgently, tokens or cryptocurrencies can be sold on an exchange, exchanging them for dollars or any other currency. Thanks to this, it is easy to know the asset’s value at any time. And this is the undeniable advantage of a loan secured by cryptocurrency. The lender receives as collateral an asset with a completely clear value.

To date, two types of Crypto Lending can be distinguished:

• The first option is fully decentralized lending, which involves smart contracts, special programs that spell out the relationship between the borrower and the lender. From the technical point of view, it is a very interesting solution because everything is determined by the program code, which controls the fulfillment of obligations by both parties. However, the use of a smart contract does not allow for the addition of loan agreements, refinancing, or fiat money in the transaction.
• The second type of cryptocurrency, which I consider the most promising, is a loan secured by existing assets. As you know, cryptocurrency has its value, and you can always find out how much it is worth today on the exchange. In the same way, your house, car, or land has value. And lending institutions and other companies with the appropriate licenses are willing to lend against these values.

When the Crypto Lending is backed by cryptocurrency, the point of scoring disappears. Even real estate can be insufficient collateral because no one knows exactly how much it will be worth when it is sold. And the price of the cryptocurrency can be found out in a split second.

But there is a downside to this feature. The borrower needs to remember that the value of tokens is determined by market demand and quotes on exchanges. Therefore, lenders usually hedge against a possible drop in the collateral value when granting a loan. A typical option is to demand urgent repayment of the loan or part of it to increase the size of the collateral. Or the parties agree in advance on the automatic sale of tokens in the event of a rapid decline in their price.

Features of Crypto Lending

The adoption rate of cryptocurrency is still far from ideal. Most car dealerships, travel and real estate agencies, brokers, and other places to spend your credit are still not getting along with cryptocurrency. Now you may ask – why even bother with cryptocurrency lending?

Crypto Lending Instant. Cryptocurrency lending is a lot like fiat: it’s capital issued to you that you can use right away. But with cryptocurrency, you can access that loan in minutes, regardless of its size.

Crypto Lending requires no permission, is available to everyone, and is unlimited. Compared to banks, the only thing you require for a bitcoin lending service is the amount of cryptocurrency you can temporarily provide as collateral. That’s why cryptocurrency lending platforms don’t require a credit check or documentation. This is what makes them accessible to all people in the world: even if you have no credit history (or bad credit) or even a bank account, you can get a loan.

Crypto Lending is limitless: your maximum loan amount depends only on the amount of cryptocurrency you can provide as collateral. If your loan-to-value ratio is 50%, you will need to invest 1 BTC to get $13,000 or USD. A loan-to-value indicator is used by lending services to protect against loss of funds. To get Crypto Lending online, you just need to have a safe wallet to store and use cryptocurrency and provide other cryptocurrencies as collateral. In this article, we’ve described the top hacks on how to increase your income by giving out cryptocurrency loans and explained the risks.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrency lending is an excellent substitute for classic exchanges and cryptocurrency exchanges. Instead of selling your cryptocurrency, it is better to keep it with you but make it bring value at the same time.

Cryptocurrency lending is quite a dangerous activity, both for the lender and the borrower. The advantage of this process is that the credit system, in this direction, is not quite developed yet. And this means that there is no clear interest rate, and if you look hard, you may find an offer that’s good for you. And because of this, you can act as an intermediary just like regular banks do: borrowing money at a low-interest rate from the Central Bank and giving it away at a much higher rate to the borrower.

Because there is no fixed interest rate, lenders are freer to act. If the borrower has no choice, lenders can lend at high-interest rates. In these situations, it is advisable to pay off the loan as soon as possible to not overpay too much in interest. Remember that lending is an additional way to hedge risk. It turns out that crypto lending has both advantages and disadvantages. But even with the disadvantages, you can understand that this industry is growing fast and has potential in the future.

There are many strategies that can be used to profit from trading stocks. Shorting stocks is one of the most popular strategies for investors, but it does come with some risks. What is shorting a stock? How does it work? And what are the benefits and drawbacks of this strategy? Keep reading to learn more about how to profit from shorting stocks.

What Is Shorting a Stock?

If you have a stock that has gone down in value, but you think it will go up in the near future, then you can short sell. In other words, you’re selling a stock you don’t own. This creates a “short position” on the stock. You then buy the stock back later at a lower price and cover your position. The investor makes a profit by borrowing a stock at a lower rate and then waiting for it to fall.

Benefits of Shorting Stocks

Shorting stocks is one of the more popular trading strategies. When you short a stock, you borrow shares on the open market and sell them with the hope that they decrease in price. If this happens, you’ll buy back the shares at a lower price and make a profit. But what are the benefits and drawbacks of this strategy? 

The benefits of shorting stocks include:

It’s easy to do: 

You don’t need any special skills or training to short stocks. All you need is money to invest in the stock, which you can get by borrowing it from your broker.

You can make money when others lose money : 

This strategy is based on an expectation that prices will go down; if they do, then you’ll make money from those who have invested from those higher prices.

You’re betting against the market :  

It’s important to remember that when you’re shorting a stock, you’re betting against what other people think about that company or industry as a whole.

Have you been hesitant to start buying and selling NFTs because of what you’ve been hearing people say about them?

When it comes to NFTs, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction. It’s possible to make a lot of money from them, but it’s also possible to lose it all. This is why it’s important that you are well-informed about whether or not they’re worth investing in. 

If you want to find out about the biggest NFT use cases myths, read on and we’ll tell you what you need to know.

What Are NFTs?

NFT’s, also known as non-fungible tokens, are digital assets whose value is recorded on a blockchain. 

A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology that records transactions that happen on a network. The great thing about a blockchain is that it is very difficult for hackers to tamper with.

At the same time, the blockchain makes it possible for people to track ownership of digital assets in a way that is transparent for everybody to see. 

There are many different forms of NFTs. This includes images, videos, audio, and even 3D animations. 

NFT Myths: NFTs Have No Value

Many people say that if an NFT is just a piece of digital art that owners publish online, can’t anybody simply copy it and say it’s their own?

What these people don’t understand is that when somebody sells an asset on a blockchain network, this transaction is permanently recorded onto it. This means that it’s impossible for somebody to return and alter this record of ownership. 

If somebody wants to take a screenshot of an NFT and claim it as their own, they can do this. But they’re not going to get very far before they get caught. 

There are great marketplaces where people buy and sell NFTs which you can find out about here. 

They Are Ruining the Environment 

The truth is that some types of blockchains have a bigger carbon footprint than others. Since people use these blockchains to buy and sell NFTs, it’s possible that you’re contributing to the release of fossil fuels by buying them. 

NFTs run on the Ethereum network, which does use lots of energy to run. But this blockchain technology is moving in the direction of becoming more energy efficient. In the future, NFTs will not be using very much energy. 

People Use Them for Money Laundering

There is lots of research that says that criminals use hard money much more often for money laundering than cryptocurrencies. It’s also important to remember that everything recorded on a blockchain is totally transparent. When people break the law, their actions get recorded in the ledger. 

Get Started in Buying and Selling NFTs Today

There are many things that people say about NFTs that simply are not true. By being informed about NFT myths, it’s easy to see that they are powerful assets that are here to stay. 

If you want to find out more about NFTs, don’t forget to check out the Investing section of our website. We publish many important articles on this subject.