Alternative Strategies Can Enhance Performance

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"So What Do I Do with My Money?"

The choice of investments available to investors is growing, and with it, scope to find greater diversification. Alternative investments—such as commodities, infrastructure and real estate—are no longer the preserve of the most sophisticated investors. Adding a variety of alternatives to a traditional portfolio has the potential to enhance returns, while also reducing risk, because they don’t typically move with other parts of a portfolio. Alternatives are the modern-day “diversifiers”— and they are more accessible than ever through ETFs.

Talk to your financial advisor about how to use alternative investments to better balance risks in your portfolio.

1 BlackRock; Informa Investment Solutions. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Standard deviation is a measurement of risk depicting the dispersion of returns from the average return. The higher the degree of dispersion, the higher the standard deviation. The information provided is for illustrative purposes only and is not meant to represent the performance of any particular investment. The data assumes reinvestment of all income and does not account for taxes or transaction costs. It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Long-Only Equity is represented by the S&P 500 Index. Long-Only Fixed Income is represented by the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index. Enhanced portfolios include a 15% allocation to alternative assets, a 5% allocation to alternative equity strategies within the equity allocation and a 5% allocation to alternative fixed income strategies within the fixed income allocation. To fund these additional allocations, the equity allocation of each traditional portfolio is reduced by 15% and the fixed income allocation is reduced by 10%. The 15% allocation to alternative assets is represented by a 5% allocation to the S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, a 5% allocation to the Barclays Currency Traders Index and a 5% allocation to the NAREIT Equity Index. The 5% allocation to equity alternative strategies is represented by the Dow Jones/Credit Suisse Long Short Equity Index. The 5% allocation to fixed income alternative strategies is represented by the Dow Jones/Credit Suisse Fixed Income Arbitrage Index.

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