You should be investing mostly in stocks when you're young. Therefore, you should open your IRA with a brokerage, not a bank. Banks typically offer poor IRA investment options for young savers.
You can invest in stocks simply by investing in a broad-market index fund, which will instantly diversify your investment across many companies. Or you can do some research and buy individual growth stocks.
If you're getting closer to retirement, you should move some of your portfolio into a diversified pool of negatively correlated assets. For example, stocks and Treasury bonds historically move in opposite directions. Treasury bonds are very low risk, which puts a floor on your losses but a cap on your gains. When capital preservation becomes more important than eking out additional returns in your Roth IRA, it's time to consider asset classes such as Treasury bonds.
What you can't control
It's important to remember that you usually can't manage the exact returns you'll earn in your Roth IRA. There are a lot of factors outside your control that dictate how well your investments perform, from macroeconomic trends to the financial performance of individual companies.
It's impossible to predict market returns over the short run and nearly as difficult to predict long-term returns. The sequence of returns you see from year to year could have a big impact on your overall returns. Poor returns after years of saving will weigh more heavily on your portfolio than poor returns early on and vice versa.
The best way to mitigate the impact of factors outside your control is to invest early and often. The longer you keep funds invested, the better your chance of earning a good return.
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