There are never great risk-free ways to invest your money that earns you good return - whether its 2009 or 2014. If you have resources to keep track of micro and macro economic indicators you can probably do specific investment but otherwise you probably want to just diversify as much as possible that your level of capital allows.

For example, there are growing indicators that home rental business is going in the boom. You can see Berkshire Hathway grabbing tons of rental properties in anticipation for that with additional benefit that when rental boom dies down, housing would be in rise again (meaning that you can milk rental properties for next few years followed by selling them off as housing units).

However to do things like above you really need significant market research and may be even a team of economist processing away all data. Next best thing for regular folks is investing in index funds which allows you to diversity while still retaining liquidity.

We're overdue for a market crash/correction. The advantage goes to contrarians who buy when others sell. Here's an interesting confirmation bias overload from Forbes...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2014/07/01/these-23...

The Fed's obsession with trying to control the market is horrifying. QE is a manipulation of capitalism. If this truly is a bubble, a crash will devastate the economy and take out housing with it. A third recession will have no easy fixes.

Indeed-- the Doom & Gloomers (Harry Dent) predict a Great Depression like scenario. I'm regular guy who pays attention to news & trends. Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't already followed the path of Greece. Hope you're sitting on some cash, canned foods, & ammo.

> the future seems very unpredictable

Future is always unpredictable. It wouldn't be future if it was known.

> how would you invest your money nowadays in a clever way

You invest your money today as you did yesterday, last week, last month, last year, last decade, last century .... and so on. You should go in investing with long haul mindset. You can't be right all the time in making your calls so consistency in investing pays. You come up with a long term validated strategy and stick with it, rain or shine. And, you don't make decisions based on short-term fluctuations, emotions or your subjective opinions.

Brazilian treasure direct is paying around 12% year or 6.5% + inflation rate in Brazil.

Get money in your american bank with a way lower rate and buy it. Beware that if the Real(brazilian currency) loses much of it's value(against your dollar) you would lose money proportionally to it.

But it's a reasonable investment as long as you diversify. There are many respectable US funds that do it.

I put it all in my startup

I'd put it in Bitcoin, we're very likely to see a new bubble this year that will take us to $2000+.

OP said "invest", not "speculate".