The Little Book of Alternative Investments Reaping Rewards by Daring to be Different

Bestselling authors Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth know that investors are bored with their typical 60/40 stock & bond portfolios and curious about whether some of the new variations going around might be right for them. At the same time, many alternative strategies are going down-market and opening to the retail investor. Stein and DeMuth recommend that investors look outside of the box to hedge funds, real estate, gold, commodities, and even art as sources of investment income.Alternative Investments are not just for the rich anymore. But which strategies make sense? Which ones add value and which ones should we take a pass on? How do we integrate them with the rest of our portfolios? How much should we use of which kind, and what kind of results can we expect when we do?Stein and DeMuth interview the leading experts in the industry, take you on a guided tour of this Ripley's museum of new and strange offerings, explain in simple language how they work (or don't work), and tell you how you can use them to manage risk and boost returns in the privacy of your own home. The authors specialize in making the technical seem simple, the esoteric, accessible, and the dry, entertaining.

Ben Stein is a respected economist who is known to many as a movie and television personality, but has worked more in personal and corporate finance than anywhere else. He has written about finance for Barron's, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Fortune; was one of the chief busters of the junk-bond frauds of the 1980s; has been a longtime critic of corporate executives' self-dealing; and has cowritten eight finance books. Stein travels the country speaking about finance in both serious and humorous ways, and is a regular contributor to CBS's Sunday Morning, CNN, and Fox News. He was the winner of the 2009 Malcolm Forbes Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism.

Phil Demuth is Managing Director of Conserv-ative Wealth Management LLC, a registered investment advisor to high-net-worth individuals, institutions, and foundations. He has cowritten seven books with Ben Stein and has also written for the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Louis Rukeyser's Mutual Funds newsletter, and the Journal of Financial Planning. His television appearances include Ludlow & Company, Glenn Beck, Squawk Box, Forbes on Fox, and Wall Street Week.