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Beyond private equity and private credit sits a wide set of exposures that do not move with a conventional stock and bond portfolio. We help clients work out which of them earn a place.
Alternative investments is a label of convenience. It stretches across real assets such as infrastructure and property, hedge fund strategies, commodities, and a long tail of specialist vehicles. These holdings share no common return driver. What they share is a job in the portfolio, which is to behave differently from broad public markets.
That variety rules out a single evaluation framework. An infrastructure asset with long-dated contracted revenue has almost nothing in common with a macro strategy trading liquid futures on a weekly horizon. So the first question is what the allocation is actually for. Return enhancement, downside protection, inflation sensitivity, and plain diversification each point towards different vehicles, and the answer decides which diligence questions matter before any one opportunity is looked at closely.
Liquidity terms, fee structures, and visibility into the underlying holdings vary enormously in this part of the market. They deserve at least as much attention as the strategy described on the cover page.
Settling what the allocation is meant to do before anyone looks at a specific fund.
Redemption rights, lock-ups, gates, and how fees are charged in practice rather than in the summary.
Whether the underlying risks can be seen clearly enough to be monitored once the money is in.