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.