Serious Money: There are three common financial questions people often throw at me. First, they always want to know if I have any tips. Second, lucky types who suddenly find themselves sitting on surplus cash want to know what they should do with it once they discover how low deposit rates are. Finally, there is often the question about exchange rates: is the euro going up or down? It takes a huge effort for the individual investor to chart the right course, writes Chris Johns

Few people ever ask the right questions, which should always be couched in terms of investment goals (retirement, holidays, cars, etc.) and the time available to achieve them.

Share-tipping is essentially the business of stockbrokers, and anyone willing to pay the necessary fees can gain access to as much research as they want. As I have mentioned before, a lot of analysis is available free over the internet, but for the best and most timely recommendations we still have to pay broker fees.

For the individual investor, there is always the issue of where he stands in a broker's pecking order - many brokerages are set up to service institutional investors rather than individuals. It is important to choose a broker that is committed to serving private clients in as timely a manner as they attend the big pension funds and insurance companies.

Both institutional and private clients have to make their minds up about the quality of the share tips they receive. Some investors - although by no means all - believe that most share tips are a waste of time and, if you have paid for them, a waste of money; equity tipsters, on this line of argument, have no more status than their horse-racing counterparts. While there are some good analysts who occasionally have deep insights into a company's prospects, there is an awful lot of unnecessary research and it takes a huge amount of effort for the individual investor to sort the wheat from the chaff. Even the professionals find it hard.

Some cynics believe that the only share tip worth having is the one based on inside information, which, of course, is as likely to land you in jail as it is to make you money. For these people, the only worthwhile equity investment is an index fund.

Unless the investor has been particularly successful at picking individual companies, this year will have seen many equity bets either tread water or lose money. Anyone who has made money in equities in 2004 needs to ask whether this reveals a particular skill - or good stockbroker - or whether they are just lucky. If the latter, they should take some profits now.

But the correct response to recent equity market disappointment should be one of supreme indifference: most of us possess no tipster skills whatsoever and have no desire to end up in jail. If we nonetheless put money in stocks, we must do so as long-term investors; if we worry about performance over the last few months, we reveal ourselves to be anything but long-term players.

If equities are just too difficult or risky, the other end of the investment spectrum is the simple and safe bank deposit. With most banks and building societies in the euro zone offering less than 2 per cent for short-term deposits, the investor is left with the distinct possibility that the real (adjusted for inflation) return on his savings is going to be negative for the foreseeable future. In an article a few months ago, I suggested that sterling deposits offered much better returns (then just over 4 per cent) but with the obvious currency risk attached.

As it turns out, there was no currency risk - sterling has held its own against the euro - and anyone who availed of a UK deposit account will have made money. The decision now is the same: rates of 5 per cent or even higher are available from some UK institutions, but currency risk might mean that any interest rate gain is more than wiped out by a fall in sterling.

Anyone who wants the safety of simple bank deposits is unlikely to be willing to bear the risk of a foreign-currency bet implied by a move into a UK bank. For such people, a domestic, euro-based deposit is really the only sensible choice.

For what it is worth, I still think that sterling will broadly maintain its value against the euro but nobody should think that I, or anyone, has any special insight into currency movements. If share-tipping is tough, accurate currency forecasting is next to impossible.

Saving for a rainy day probably means restricting ourselves to simple deposits. But saving for retirement or other long-term objectives means we have to be more adventurous and more understanding of the risks and rewards available from different asset classes.

Given a particular objective, the investor is always best advised to build a highly diversified portfolio, subject to when he will need the money and how much risk he is willing to take. Within that diversified structure, the investor can always have fun with some bets based on his own research and insights.

For me, a good place to start is with the consensus and a decision whether or not to bet against it. Many people seem to be getting gloomy about the economic growth outlook and are worried about inflation and interest rates. In such an environment, most major asset classes struggle: bonds and equities tend to move sideways or down.

For what it is worth, I think the gloom is overdone. I still hold the view that most equity markets will make small positive gains this year. Hence, if stock markets fall further I will take that as an opportunity to issue my own tip: strong buy.