The Alternative Answer: How Savvy Investors Generate Superior Returns

For decades, investors have taken the “safe” route (“long-only domestic stock and bond portfolios”), which has proven inadequate in today’s economy. How then to invest, when stocks, bonds, and the economy are all tanking? Rice, alternative investment editor of Bloomberg TV, advocates strategies that have been making money for wealthy investors since the ’80s, and that are now available to all. Using alternative methods, investors can increase current income and bulletproof their portfolios against the next economic decline. These plans—based on investment in managed futures, real assets, venture funds, companies based in emerging economies, and natural resources—are effective because, as time passes, “a portfolio of them deliver [larger] and more diverse [revenue] streams... than do standard investments.” Rice takes readers through a crash course in alternative investments and the creation of a “panoramic, risk tolerant portfolio” and how typical investors can take a better tack. Rice lucidly explains complex investment strategies and less familiar financial terms, and the book is worth buying for the clear, cogent glossary and finance tutorial alone. While most readers will be skeptical about a plan that departs this much from the accepted wisdom, this is a great start for the adventurous. (May)