the dad The Consumers and Users Organization has prepared a “traffic signal danger“To rank 12 investment products from safest to least safe.Among the safest investments are treasury bills, savings accounts, time deposits, and public debt. As the riskiest cryptocurrencies and their derivatives so far.
The safest products that have a green traffic light are these four:
1) Treasury bills | They offer guaranteed interest for 3, 6, 9 or 12 months. Backed by the state and with a profitability similar to the official interest rates of the euro area. But their interest is declining: the last auction of 12-month bills closed with a total interest of 3.3%.
Spanish households show a very conservative profile in their investments. Last year, when the IBEX 35 index rose by 22.8%, they bought shares worth €20,611 million, although they allocated almost €4,000 million more to buy the popular Treasury bills (€24,428 million), according to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV). Study of the behavior of retail investors in the stock market.
2) Savings Accounts | The money is always available, but the return varies according to the bank’s desire. The only risk is when you exceed 100,000 euros, because if the bank goes bankrupt, the Deposit Guarantee Fund covers this amount at most. The most interesting accounts offer an annual interest of up to 3.7%.
Spanish household wealth, measured by the difference between savings and debt, rose by 9.77% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, hitting a new record and surpassing 2.1 billion euros, according to data from the Bank of Spain. Household financial assets (cash, shares, deposits and income securities) rose by 6.68% compared to the previous year, reaching 2.88 trillion euros.
3) Term Deposits | They guarantee a fixed return for a specified period. As OCU notes, they are not obligated to allow early cancellation, and those who do are usually penalized by losing the resulting interest. They have the same risks and guarantees as accounts. The best ones have an annual interest rate of over 3%.
It should be noted that Spanish savings do not benefit from higher interest rates like the rest of the Europeans, even though the price of money is the same throughout the eurozone. According to a study by Finizens, the average salary on current accounts in Spain is 55% lower, while the interest paid on time deposits is also 25% lower than the European average.
4) Public debt | The Treasury issues 3- and 5-year bonds and 10-, 15-, 30- and 50-year bonds. The principal is received at maturity, and periodic interest is charged during this period. If the owner needs to sell before the expiration date, he may incur a loss.
The Treasury cut the yield on public debt earlier this year, setting the yield on three- and five-year bonds at 2.6% to 2.7%, down from 3.2% and about 3.4% at the last auction in 2018. 2023.
There are other investment products, but they are more vulnerable. Market ups and downs. OCU believes that those who can invest for the long term, 10 years or more, “should not overestimate” these ups and downs because they can benefit from higher returns without taking on greater risk.
But she warns against some products that “They are moving in a high risk area and should be avoided. Or at least get to know them well before hiring them,” as they are hired by red traffic light: Financial derivatives, the value of which depends on the development of the price of another asset, with rises and falls that cannot always be explained; and Cryptocurrenciesvery volatile, without bank guarantees and with “very high” risks.
40% of cryptocurrency users in Spain own BitcoinWhich makes this currency the main cryptocurrency, according to the survey conducted by Imop for Funcas and published last January. The results also show that 5% of Spaniards have some cryptocurrency, a figure similar to that provided by the CNMV, which puts the percentage at 6.8%. After Bitcoin, the next currency is Cardano, held by 25% of crypto users, and Ethereum, held by 24%. Other currencies such as Solana, Polkadot or Dogecoin are held by less than 10% of the crypto users surveyed.
According to the survey results, the typical profile of an investor in these digital currencies corresponds to a young man, usually male, studying or working, with a “high” monthly income and residing in large urban areas.
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