Stocks and shares.

Passive tracker funds are generally best if you want to invest long term - if you are looking for a quick buck then speculating on Bitcoin will probably be better.

Shares are long term investments because you can never tell what's going to happen. Basically if there's a bull market (a rising market) then shares will do better than cash or bonds. I invested a lot during '90s when there was very long bull market and you basically couldn't go wrong. I made a lot of money. However that bull market came to an end with the tech crash of 2000. The FTSE had hit a peak of about 7000 but over the next few years it did a slow motion crash ending up at about 3000. It's now about 7,500 so you can see that from 2000 to 2024 have been lean years for shares. It's been very hard to make any money.

I've moved nearly all my money out of shares in favour of cash or bonds - less risk. I don't see much point in investing in UK shares in the foreseeable future. Our country is in such a mess - low productivity etc - that you won't make any money except if you're lucky. Stick to fixed rate interest bonds IMO. You won't get rich but you'll protect the value of your cash.

And I wouldn't touch bitcoin with a barge pole. They're not an investment - they're an asset class. And they're highly volatile and unregulated.

I wouldn't touch bitcoin with a barge pole either. AI stocks are doing well, though.

I haven't dabbled in stocks and shares personally, but my parents used to do 'penny stocks', and they did quite well if memory serves. 

I was thinking of fixed rate bonds like those marketed by banks and building societies where you get a defined interest rate for a defined term (and you can get the  money out before term by paying a penalty). With the prospect of rates going down in the near future it might be time to buy one of these (you can get about 5%) for 2 or 3 years. Government bonds have recently bombed because interest rates have risen sharply, so the underlying value of the bonds has crashed - unless held to maturity.

The other thing I'd recommend is Premium Bonds. Dead safe and they deliver 4.4% (tax free) - and cash them in whenever you like. I have £50k (the max) in them and I get about £200 in prizes every month. Also there's the slight possibility of winning a million. I've also got quite a lot in NSI Index Linked (sadly no longer available). For the past few years I've been getting 10% tax free which is brilliant. That beats the stock market.

I steer clear of stock market investments nowadays because I reckon it's very hard to make money in a flat market - especially when there are so many hedge funds that can buy and sell shares in a fraction of second.  

Two things to consider. Only invest in an industry you know a lot about. The other is look for cases where most of the dumb public think one thing, but because you know better, you can safely punt the other way. Times where there is big discontinuity are good opportunities. For example the BP oil disaster say, the press go apeshit crazy so people sold tons of shares. You needed to know if they could cap the well. If you were an oil engineer you would know. In that case you would buy tons of shares at the grimiest hour and gear your investments up many times and wait. If you don't know anything about anything and played the market the odds would run agaisnt you and you would get fleeced because the pros play the same game. The trouble is as a small investor you have to do a lot of research. The pros benefit from economy of scale. This is always a problem for small investors, like you are at a handicap because the costs of making the punt outweigh potential returns. People who do well in investing spend their life studying it.

If I were a hedge fund manager I'd be shorting Tesla. It's blindingly obvious that the business model of Tesla (i.e. making a profit by selling carbon credits to traditional car manufacturers) is going to go bust. It just seems to be taking a long time. It's like the road-runner after it's run over a cliff.