To address these challenges, investors face a standard menu of options (Exhibit 1). To improve the tradeoff between risk and return in portfolios, they can reallocate to asset classes providing better risk-adjusted returns, lower correlations, or a bit of both. In recent years, for example, certain investors have increased their allocations to alternatives, including illiquid private assets like private equity and real estate. Although this has been a successful approach, these types of vehicles are not available to many individual investors.
