Until recently, alternative assets were only available to a limited investment audience, usually reserved for those with large portfolios. Non-traditional asset classes historically included real estate, commodities, natural resources, artwork, precious metals, currency, and the like – and had a high financial entry barrier.
In today’s global financial markets, however, that is no longer the case. The evolution of global financial markets has provided an increasing breadth and depth of products that allow more investors to add alternative assets to their portfolios.
For some Long Wharf clients, the advantages of these kind of assets are twofold: One, because they often do not move in sync with the stock market, they can minimize exposure to market volatility by diversifying a portfolio from traditional fixed-income and equity assets; and two, while sometimes riskier than traditional assets in the short term, they have potential to generate higher returns in the longer term.