This is not an investment suggestion but a point to ponder on. I am seeing many posts suggesting dips to look to buy into gold and silver and putting various rationale on why it will continue going up. My 2 decades in markets have taught me this
\- Nothing goes up for ever
\- Few things may remain down for ever
\- If you really are thinking long term (5+ years), it makes sense to own a slightly less popular asset theme which will not disappear
\- Gold and silver made a lot of sense to allocate in 2020, I am not sure about today
Stocks can remain subdued for long periods of time. They are not destined to go up for ever. All the finfluencers giving you suggestions on investing in equity funds for 12% returns have no idea what they are talking about.
These are practical suggestions I can give you
\- Work on your primary skill and try to maximise your income if you are not a full time trader
\- Once you have savings of 10L+, work on an asset allocat-ion %. Keep rebalancing each month. If you are 25, E-50%, Debt - 30%, Bullions - 10%, Alternative classes - 10% will work fine. Rebalancing helps you to own underowned assets and book profits in assets that have run up.
\- Learn markets through small bets: you are not smarter than all. If you do not accept it, you will learn it the hard way
Now on to a more specific suggestion which is my personal opinion and I am no Warren Buffet - I feel InvITs and REITs (on dips) qualify for the underowned asset category. My thesis for them is simple - those which are at yields of 10% plus will return your capital in about 8-10 years. Whatever is the unit price at that term is yours for free. REITs when I invested in them had yields of 8% although now have 5%. Within last 3 yrs I did a rough maths and it has already returned me 30% capital and I am sitting on about 25-40% capital gains depending on the REIT. SEBI mandates them to distribute 90% of their cashflows which makes it impossible to fudge numbers in most cases. So, if you pick up some reputed names in this space and do not aim for moons, they should give you a good handy 12% CAGR with very little risk in next 4-5 years. I feel that is great for a market like this.
In short, all you need to do is common sense than trying to be smart here. Build corpus over time and you will do very well in 5-10 years time.
PS- SIPs are good but never linear. I had a period from 2010-2013 when SIPs did not even return 1% CAGR. So, asset allocation should be your strategy - SIPs are not holy grail unless backed by a strategy.