Alternative Investments

Can people give me advice on some alternative investments.

Do you care about liquidity? What is your investment time horizon?

I do care alot, I dont liek to tie my money up too much and i am looking at an investment period of 3 to 5 years. I have been looking at possibly buying Gold or Fine French Wine. please advice

Interestingly, I had coffee with a fund manager earlier today who commented on gold as being the "ultimate speculation". I think he was referring to the current price of spot gold as benchmark. :)


Gold in today's investment world is not an alternative asset class any more. I personally think everybody should have some gold position in his portfolio--it's just a matter of timing and price level. If you believe that the U.S. government is going to continue printing greenbacks at the rate they do now, high inflation is always looming in the background. In general we will be going into a commodity hungry era if we are not already in one-just assume 10% of the Chinese will be rich enough to drive their own cars in the next 10 years, eat more protein based food and demand more of everything. It makes macro sense to investment in commodity in general, albeit through a more tradeable instrument such as mutual funds for liquidity.


I don't know much about wine investment, although I do consume an awful lot (sometimes too much)! Because of my work I have come across wine related investments though, but mostly in funds. Again, investing in less liquid assets such as fine art and wine require considerable knowledge, and is very elastic to market condition. Physical wine also have one draw back, there is a lack of mature market and liquidity compared to more main stream asset classes. Imagine holding on to 1,000 bottles of rare wine in times of war, hyper inflation, and/or a natural diaster! If you ARE equipped with enough knowledge in wine, there are wine options in the market that allow investors to buy premium wine without physically holding them, or even when the grapes are in the field.


In the most classic sense of the term alternative investment, there are four types of alts as opposed to the traditional equity, fixed income, foreign exchange etc. These are hedge funds, private equity funds, real assets (commodity for instance) and real estate.


I don't recommend hedge fund and hedge fund is also not an asset class a typical retail investor can invest into. We talked about real assets. Real estate is a topic that almost everybody in HK is an expert in. Private equity is an interesting, but very illiquid asset class that invests in non listed equity in private businesses. All four types have different risk and return profiles. We can discuss more if you are interested, provided that I know your risk appetite and return expectations.

For an alternative investment that will definitely pay off (and one I think that all the self-made rich people would agree with) keep away from people who want 55 of your money and instead spend the money to buy and read an investment book : eg. Graham & Dodd, anything by Bogle, Bootle, Keynes, Lowenstein, Grantham, all those Yale or other economists, Jim Grant, El-Erian and Bill Gross. Read NYT guy's book, forget his name. Michael Lewis' books. Seth Klarman's book. Buy and read randomly.


Yes, don't buy gold, buy a gold fund! Why because gold you can buy on the street and I get nothing whereas a gold fund has what percentage fee attached?


If the world is coming to an end, you will need real gold not a piece of paper that is immediately worth much less than you paid.


If you want, buy a gold bar (HK has a bunch of real gold dealers, the gold exchange is in Sheung Wan) and an expensive case of red wine and store it well and I think you will be in front already, and you can look at your investment and drink it if the urge arises, e.g. when gold price collapses.


Anything without a return is speculation, according to a lot of people, e.g. wine and gold.

Here's a good one: Tear Gas Manufacturers


With all the riots around the world - and more coming every day - this has to be a great opportunity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/teargas-booming-market-turkish-protests


Also the bullet industry... huge huge money to be made going forward

www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/