Gold in the sands of an hourglass

Time... Patience... Steel nerves... Educated decisions... Market analysis...

The harder things to commit yourself to, IMO, are large, long term investments, that are more of gambling than anything that is really assured a high return for your investment...

The downsides:

1. Your gold is ties up for a long time (months)
2. It is hard to be sure your investment will pay off
3. It is a nervous challenge and could result in a net loss

The Upsides:

1. Very low time investment
2. Its gambling, so can be lots of fun
3. It can be very profitable....

What I am talking about is investing now in the pets and mount from the Lunar Festival, and Love is in the Air.   and then wait for 6 months to sell...  

Or, there is one definite and one possible payday in 5.0... Pets and profession leveling mats from Pre-MOP zones...

Both will have narrow windows to unload.  With pets it will be a short window and its only if you catch the brief window when people are buying lots of pets with the new BOA pet system... On crafting mats, it will be a window only during the massive rush of new monks and panda's leveling.   My guess is the pets will have a 2-4 week surge in price following the implementation of the new system on which we really don’t have many details, and the professions mats will have a 1-4 month window for sales... YMMV, server size, the economy, the nature of server population and many factors will play into either strategy, however both have great possibilities... IMO.. for crafting mats, Ore has among the highest possibilities for returns... Ore since it can be prospected, smelted or left raw, for engineering, Mining, JC, and BS... where there is only First aid and tailoring for cloth, and alchy/inscription for herbs... Though I will not likely be doing it, frozen orbs may be a good investment too, they are part of recipes for +5 levels to skills, and can be used to buy other mats like eternals from wrath for leveling... One of the best resources to do your research would IMO be look to wow-professions and look at the mats for leveling to 500... not all the way to 525 since it is reasonable to assume that there will be MoP patterns that can be learned at 500... or go for the 500-525 mats since many of those will give +5 levels instead of +1...

Keep thinking of ways to make money on the occasion of MoP release...