I heard a financial analyst say that, in these times, if you are looking for more than 5% interest return on your savings, you will have to accept a degree of risk.
Right now the average retail savings account in the US pays less than 0.1%. The only way to literally have no month to month or year to year fluctuation is to be in deposit accounts - savings, checking, CDs. I can remember getting 5.25% in a variable rate savings account some 7-8 years ago when interest rates were quite high. There is basically "no risk" with deposit accounts, as long as the amount you have in them is under the FDIC coverage limit, and as long as the FDIC remains solvent.
Stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, etc will always fluctuate in value, and you'll at least sometimes be on the wrong end of that fluctuation - no matter how smart you are, how much research you do or hire others to do, and no matter how often you "trade", buy, sell, short, use options, etc.
Even if you buy the highest rated bonds that guarantee a return on principal at maturity you'll see a bit of fluctuation. This is especially true of longer term bonds and US treasuries in an environment when interest rates are changing or expected to change.
Things like the relatively expensive annuities will "guarantee" a certain return as long as you keep your money in it - even the better variable annuities have this feature. But once you pull your money out, you're left with whatever your actual account value is in most cases. And if you have one of those special annuities that will actually guarantee a return of principal at some point even if you've spent almost all the money, you'll be paying out the ass for it while you're in it. Insurance companies are usually pretty good at figuring those things out so that they still make money on them.
