What are alternative assets?

Alternative assets, which include any non-publicly traded assets (private market alternatives), are financial assets that do not fall into conventional investment categories: stocks, bonds, or cash. 

And they may be an option answer for more robust returns than public markets alone can offer.

Alternative assets can help build a diversified portfolio, may work well for those with longer investment time horizons, and have demonstrated strong performances in recent decades.

There is a wealth of alternative assets to explore:

• Venture capital
• Private equity
• Real estate, including farmland
• Loans
• Digital assets
• Commodities
• Infrastructure
• Fine art
• Collectibles
• Fine wine and rare spirits 

While alternative assets have the potential to yield high returns, they have long been largely limited in availability to institutional investors and high net-worth individuals. That’s because institutions and extremely wealthy individuals have significantly more resources and risk insulation and because investing in alternative assets has historically been a time-consuming, complicated, and expensive process.

Nowadays, these barriers are being lowered, and sophisticated individual investors can now use IRA savings to invest in these assets.