Interesting assignment that my mum gave me this morning. She wanted to put in 50k for her savings to get more returns instead of the usual savings. I think she got this lump sum after her previous fixed deposits expired. She wanted me to look into some instruments where she can get better returns but she don't want to put it into the stock market for fear of eroding her capital. I also won't recommend that she put it into the stock market when I cannot guarantee her capital won't be lost in the process. Here's what I found out: 1. Firstly, most fixed deposit rates suck. The three local banks are so full of money that they don't even pretend to like more additional funds. Certainly, that's the idea I had when I saw the returns on their timed deposits. The rates are not worth mentioning - better than ......