### What are Investments?
Investments are the basic building block of Countercyclical.
Each investment represents an asset that you (or your team) are looking to appraise.
We employ a [value-oriented](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueinvesting.asp) approach to how we present users with the initial information around an investment.
You can create an investment right on the platform as well as import preexisting holdings from your brokerage and other investment-related accounts.
### Types
#### Regular Investments
Regular investments are investments you work on or create on our platform.
#### Connected Investments
If you have investments in a brokerage or other investment-related financial accounts, you can safely connect them to Countercyclical to determine the on-going risk profile of an investment as well as if a holding is worthy of selling off, holding, or increasing in size.
We use [Plaid](https://plaid.com/) to securely pipe your data between your financial institutions and our platform.
### Sharing
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Depending on who an investment is shared with affects its overall visibility. Please read the following section carefully to understand the different types of sharing that an investment can have.
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Based on the type of investment you're creating, who you're working on it with, and the extent of your relationship with the collaborators on the investment, there are different permissions that come along with each investment once it's shared.
#### Personal
When a user creates an investment without inviting anyone, it is a Personal Investment*.*
When an investment is personal, no one can access the investment besides the creator of the investment.
On our Free plan, a user can create 1 personal investment.
#### Shared
An investment becomes shared when the creator of the investment shares the investment with one or more users.
The invited users do not have to be invited to the workspace to collaborate on the investment. However, if you want to create a team with collaborators from a specific investment, you will have to invite them to the Workspace.
#### Team
When a user is part of a team, either as the creator of the team or simply a member, they can invite their entire team
This makes the investment a Team Investment.
#### Connected
When a user connects one or more of their investment accounts to Countercyclical, each holding represents a different investment.
Countercyclical keeps your investments up-to-date by checking to see if there are any changes to your account on a weekly basis.
Rest assured that even if you sell an investment, Countercyclical will keep all of the work you've done with a connected investment and will set it as Archived once a holding is sold. You change this in the Workspace settings for an investment if you'd prefer a different behavior.
#### Archived
When a user archives an investment, the investment becomes [locked](https://docs.countercyclical.io/fundamentals/broken-reference) and is removed from searches.
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