Direct vs indirect investments: the implications of a choice for a short-term private investor

The subject of this article is the implications of a choice between direct and indirect investments for a short-term private investor. The purpose of this article is to produce a review of scientific research, conducted on the topic, and with its help to define short-term private investors’ necessities and to examine money market instruments versus money-market mutual funds as tools for short-term private investors. The conducted analysis of the recent research publications has shown that theshort-term private investors require high liquidity low risk instrument and can tolerate comparatively low returns, and that the best tools for such investments are money market instruments. During the research, we noted the trade-off between the T-bills and commercial papers with regards to risk, liquidity and yield, and considered the benefits of indirect investments via MMMFs; however, we came to the conclusion that the riskiness of such investments outweighs their benefits.