Ben Stein & Phil DeMuth 
The Little Book of Alternative Investments 
Reaping Rewards by Daring to be Different

Praise For THE LITTLE BOOK OF ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS

‚Ben and Phil have done it again. Another lucid, insightful
book, designed to enhance your wealth! In today’s stock-addled cult
of equities, there is a gaping hole in most investors‘
portfolios…the whole panoply of alternative investments that can
simultaneously help us cut our risk, better hedge our inflation
risk, and boost our return. This Little Book is filled with big
ideas on how to make these markets and strategies a treasured part
of our investing toolkit.‘

–Robert Arnott, Chairman, Research Affiliates

‚I have been reading Ben Stein for thirty-five years and Phil
De Muth since he joined up with Ben ten years ago. They do solid
work, and this latest is no exception.‘

–Jim Rogers, author of A Gift to My
Children

‚If anyone can make hedge funds sexy, Stein and De Muth can, and
they’ve done it with style in this engaging, instructive, and
tasteful how-to guide for investing in alternatives. But you should
read this Kama Sutra of investment manuals not just for the
thrills, but also to learn how to avoid the hazards of promiscuous
and unprotected investing.‘

–Andrew Lo, Professor and Director, MIT Laboratory for
Financial Engineering

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Are You Alternative? Dare to Expose Yourself xiii

Chapter One Everything You Know Is Wrong: Classify Your Investments the Alternative Way 1

Chapter Two Efficient Market Theory and Its Discontents: Out with the Old, In with the New–Overhauling the 60/40 Portfolio 17

Chapter Three Collectibles as Investments: Beauty in the Eye of the Marketplace 37

Chapter Four More Alternatives We Don’t Love: The Elephant’s Graveyard of Financial Products 49

Chapter Five Conventional Alternatives I–Commodities: To Make a Killing, Take Out a Contract 67

Chapter Six Conventional Alternatives II–Real Estate: In Real Estate We Trust 83

Chapter Seven The Ultimate Alternative Investments: Hedge Fundamentals 95

Chapter Eight So Why Invest in Hedge Funds?: Okay, We Lied 119

Chapter Nine A Field Guide to Hedge Funds, Part One: The Long and the Short of It 133

Chapter Ten A Field Guide to Hedge Funds, Part Deux: Arbitrage, et al. 151

Chapter Eleven One-Fund Solutions: Destroy All Replicants–or Not? 171

Chapter Twelve Hedge Funds Pigs in Mutual Fund Blankets: The Mutual Fund Beauty Pageant Begins 189

Chapter Thirteen Adding Alternative Investments to Your Portfolio: Finding Your Portfolio’s G-Spot 213

Conclusion: Quest into the Unknown 239

Appendix: Fundamentals 243

Acknowledgments 253

About the Authors 255

Über den Autor

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 Conservative 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.