Successful investors take risks. The trick is to take smart ones, in a diversified portfolio.

Here’s how.

First, make sure you’re covered on the financial basics. Then start scouting out powerful places to invest any excess cash that's making you next to nothing in a savings account. With the holidays and perhaps a raise or bonus on the horizon, it’s a good time to make that money work for you and your retirement.

To help, we asked five leading investors to share their best ideas on where to invest $10,000 right now. (It makes sense for smaller sums, too.) We first quizzed them back in June, when we also asked exchange-traded-fund analyst Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg Intelligence to choose ETFs that came closest to the strategies and themes they highlighted. Some of the experts also run mutual funds that employ their strategies.

Among their summer favorites were out-of-favor emerging markets, and many ETFs tracking those markets have seen double-digit gains. How did our panel of experts do last quarter, exactly? Very well, thank you. Check out the results that follow each new entry below. For comparison, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 3.3 percent from June 30 to Sept. 30.

So is it too late to get into emerging markets now? Is China still promising or just too messy? We’ll let the panel answer, and share its new ideas, ranging from opportunities in floating-rate bank loans to consumer-related stocks in China.

You can toggle between last quarter’s and this quarter’s advice with a quick click, or just check out the panel’s advice for the here and now. Either way, as we emphasized in June’s “Where to Invest $10,000 Right Now” and above, take a look at these financial musts first.

Then see if you can profit from our experts’ latest ideas.

David Fuller's view

There is plenty of interest in emerging markets among the five distinguished names mentioned by Bloomberg above.  Only one favoured Europe, as I recall, and not that enthusiastically.  No one recommended US stocks.  No one mentioned commodities, including precious metals.

What should we make of this?

Personally, I would be careful.  Yes, emerging markets have less expensive valuations than Wall Street but does that make them attractive buys today?  I’m cautious and have been for several months.  The S&P 500 looks tired, as does the DJIA, following its marginal new high in August, which has yet to receive Dow Theory confirmation as Transports continues to lag.

Among emerging markets, previously inform India’s Mumbai has clearly lost uptrend consistency beneath its 1Q 2015 highs and is very likely to at least test its rising MA.  China’s Shanghai Composite will continue to look like a recovery candidate while the reaction lows continue to rise, albeit with the help of a controlled devaluation, as you can see from CNY per 1 USD.

I have discussed all this in more detail in this Monday’s Audio.