Many people go into real estate investment because of the ability to negatively gear. Negative gearing simply means mortgaging your property and using the capital to buy additional investments and because of the safety of real estate borrowing facilities, this is generally not a problem. Shares Shares are also sometimes called equities. When you buy a share you purchase a part of the ownership of the company. The return from shares is similar to property in that it is a combination of dividends and changes in the share price.
Dividends are a share of the profits of the company.
The share price reflects what someone wanting to buy a share is prepared to pay for it. Shares generally provide the best returns of the four investment classes but have the highest risk because shares can rise or fall sharply depending on the economy and other conditions. Because of this, investment in shares is best suited to long term investors as any short term fall should be made up over time by higher average returns. Investing in shares is simply an investment where you buy an interest in the ownership of a company and look towards the dividends paid from profits for your return as well as the capital increase in the value of your shares. Share prices rise and fall at will depend on the economy and other factors.