<P> A certified company investment advisor should conduct an assessment of each client's individual needs and risk profile . The advisor then recommends appropriate investments . </P> <P> The different asset class definitions are widely debated, but four common divisions are stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities . The exercise of allocating funds among these assets (and among individual securities within each asset class) is what investment management firms are paid for . Asset classes exhibit different market dynamics, and different interaction effects; thus, the allocation of money among asset classes will have a significant effect on the performance of the fund . Some research suggests that allocation among asset classes has more predictive power than the choice of individual holdings in determining portfolio return . Arguably, the skill of a successful investment manager resides in constructing the asset allocation, and separate individual holdings, so as to outperform certain benchmarks (e.g., the peer group of competing funds, bond and stock indices). </P> <P> It is important to look at the evidence on the long - term returns to different assets, and to holding period returns (the returns that accrue on average over different lengths of investment). For example, over very long holding periods (e.g. 10 + years) in most countries, equities have generated higher returns than bonds, and bonds have generated higher returns than cash . According to financial theory, this is because equities are riskier (more volatile) than bonds which are themselves more risky than cash . </P> <P> Against the background of the asset allocation, fund managers consider the degree of diversification that makes sense for a given client (given its risk preferences) and construct a list of planned holdings accordingly . The list will indicate what percentage of the fund should be invested in each particular stock or bond . The theory of portfolio diversification was originated by Markowitz (and many others). Effective diversification requires management of the correlation between the asset returns and the liability returns, issues internal to the portfolio (individual holdings volatility), and cross-correlations between the returns . </P>

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