PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Javier Estrada TI - Alternatives: <em>How? How Much? Why?</em> AID - 10.3905/jwm.2016.19.3.049 DP - 2016 Oct 31 TA - The Journal of Wealth Management PG - 49--61 VI - 19 IP - 3 4099 - https://pm-research.com/content/19/3/49.short 4100 - https://pm-research.com/content/19/3/49.full AB - Alternatives have become an important asset for institutional investors, and more recently also for individual investors. Many alternatives are easily investable nowadays, and the focus of this article is on two of the most widely used, namely, gold and real estate investment trusts (REITs), representing exposure to commodities and real estate. The evidence in this article shows that these alternatives 1) belong to the optimal portfolios of investors under very different optimization criteria, 2) generally increase risk-adjusted returns given three different definitions of risk, and 3) are more effective at reducing risk than they are at enhancing returns.TOPICS: Commodities, real estate, mutual funds/passive investing/indexing, performance measurement