What's the best low risk, high gain investment?

I was curious on how people invest.

A basic concept in investing is that there are NO low risk, high gain investments. There are low risk, low gain investments such as money markets and bonds, and there are higher risk, higher gain investments such as stocks, stock mutual funds and real estate. Most people buy a mix of both types of investments.

However, I suspect you may be asking what has the highest gain among the low risk investments. Here are several suggestions. I do not have a financial interest in any of these websites. (This does not violate the Yahoo answers ban on solicitations as I have no financial interest)

I like the the Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund with a current compound yield of ~4.1% APY.
https://flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/...

If you are in a high tax bracket you may prefer their tax exempt money market funds:
https://flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/...

Sometimes other institutions will have a higher teaser rate, but Vanguard tends to have the highest yields I've found over the long run. (Vanguard money markets are not FDIC insured, however.)

Article on teaser rates:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ba...

Bankrate.com provides links to CD's with high interest rates as well as high interest rate banks.
http://www.bankrate.com/
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/rate/deposit...

ING and HSBC often have rates close to Vanguard, and most of their products are FDIC insured. You can check these at the following links:
http://home.ingdirect.com/open/open.asp
http://www.us.hsbc.com/1/2/3/personal/sa...

(If you are investing for a long period of time and are willing to accept some volatility, you should consider putting some money into no-load low-expense mutual funds. These are not guaranteed, but over the long run produce much higher returns.)

I think a mutual fund fits your criteria. A mutual fund is simply a financial intermediary that allows a group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment objective. The mutual fund will have a fund manager who is responsible for investing the pooled money into specific securities (usually stocks or bonds). When you invest in a mutual fund, you are buying shares (or portions) of the mutual fund and become a shareholder of the fund.

Mutual funds are one of the best investments ever created because they are very cost efficient and very easy to invest in (you don't have to figure out which stocks or bonds to buy).
By pooling money together in a mutual fund, investors can purchase stocks or bonds with much lower trading costs than if they tried to do it on their own. But the biggest advantage to mutual funds is diversification.

IRA is number one then you are looking at T bills which are quite a bit more expensive. If you want your money distributed to you on a timely fashion, you could buy an anuity.

best low risk, high gain investment? waffles.
everyone loves waffles.

Right now it would be stocks and mutual funds. They are very low right now due to economic worries---invest in a good company or sector and youll be rewarded tremendously....Trust me right now everyone is seeing the color red-buy now and youll see green in the next few years. The economy is talking about a recession and that usually has a time frame of 6 months, the economy isnt going to be bad forever-think about it!

MUTUAL FUNDS

One idea is to invest with 5% guaranteed forex income.

to invest in penny stock is low risk high gain

INvest in ETF: ETFs are cheaper than mutual funds. ETFs have very low annual expenses, nearly 20 basis points or 0.2% less. As against this, actively managed mutual funds show average expenses exceeding 135 basis points (1.35%). This does not include the extra 2% - 5% as loads, 12(b)-1 marketing fees, transactions costs, and soft dollar expenses mutual funds, passed on to you but never informed, except in very fine print that nobody cares to read.
http://debts-to-wealth.com/category/Why-...