Research on Alternative Asset Classes
Our central library for Alternative Investing Research provides Institutional Investors with a single reference point where research on alternative asset classes can be easily identified and accessed free of charge. The most popular alternative asset classes amongst institutional investors have historically been commercial property and private equity. Hedge Funds gained in popularity, particularly during the 2000s, while infrastructure investing has been gain ground in the last decade. More recently, private debt has started appearing on the radar of many institutional investors.
One of the best places to access content in a single location is the Savvy Investor website. Here you will find research papers on all alternative asset classes, with a separate topic section dedicated to each asset class. These white papers will be written by asset managers, investment consultants and academics and will be of special interest to those making big picture asset allocation decisions, particularly pension funds, other asset owners, actuaries and asset allocators.
In order to view all research on alternative asset classes, you can either view all alternative assets articles and white papers, or visit Savvy Investor’s full white paper directory, where you may search by date and keywords. Alternatively, to look for the best research on a specific asset class (e.g. Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Farmland, Infrastructure) you can visit the topic sections for that asset class.
A popular theme within the “Alternative Asset Classes”section is investing in “real assets”. These are assets which, over the medium-term, are likely to hold their value in the event of an inflation shock. While this is hard to determine in advance with any certainty, these assets are most likely to include commercial real estate, infrastructure investments, commodities and farmland & timberland. All of these are “physical” rather than financial assets (an alternative definition that is sometimes used to describe “real assets”. Some of these topics are covered in more detail in recent blog posts, including “The Best Real Assets Papers of 2018” and “Keeping it Real: Allocating to Real Assets”.
The commodities asset class is one of the main asset classes that investors expect to benefit when economic growth accelerates. Indeed, since the 2009 financial crisis, the commodities asset class has seen a number of anticipatory price rises as investors look forward to a normalisation of economic conditions. A recent research post identifies the best papers on the drivers of commodity returns, examining super-cycles of commodity prices, the drivers of commodity price booms and busts, and a number of similarly fascinating discussions about this asset class.
Alternative asset classes can often be relatively illiquid. Therefore investors should expect an additional return (a so-called illiquidity premium) in compensation for the higher transaction cots associated with such investments. In a recent blog post, we survey the best recent research and highlight optimal strategies for investing in illiquid assets.
If you want to navigate directly to a selected alternative asset classes, you can follow these links to the most popular papers on hedge funds, the best papers on private equity investing, a list of the top infrastructure investing research, or the best recent research on commercial real estate for institutional investors.