Discover iPartners CEO Travis Miller's knowledge as he digs into surprising investing in his latest book "Grow Your Wealth Faster with Alternative Assets," which was featured in an article on Stockhead. Miller's book, available through Wiley Publishing and major retailers such as Amazon, gives valuable insights into accessible high-yield alternative investments based on his 17 years of expertise in financial markets and management of over $5 billion in funds. Travis takes on the Stockhead challenge to explain the what, how, and why of taking the less-travelled investing road in a unique walk-through.

Travis Miller, CEO of iPartners is The Alternative Asset guru, an absolute fiend for finding, unearthing and getting in early on unexpected investing.

Travis has worked in financial markets for the last 17 years, most recently as Managing Director at UBS Investment Bank, and today he manages over $5bn in funds. His coup de gras may’ve been by disrupting the industry a bit by creating a financial investment platform to make high-yield alternative investments easily accessible to the ordinary punter with an eye for the alternative.

His new book, Grow Your Wealth Faster with Alternative Assets, explores this further and is out this month via Wiley Publishing and available on Amazon et al.

In this exclusive walk-through, Travis accepted the Stockhead challenge to explain – the WTH, the HTF and the WHY WLD I anyway – when it comes to choosing the investment path less travelled…

Investing in a private market

Alternative assets are any investment outside of listed stocks, bonds, and term deposits. Alternatives can broaden investors’ portfolios, adding greater returns and diversifying risks. There is a wide cross-section of assets that fall into the alternatives classification, they include private credit, private equity, real estate, infrastructure and agriculture.

Alternatives are private market investments, meaning they are not listed on an exchange, such as a public company that is listed on a stock exchange.

Instead, private market assets are generally held in units in a unit trust, as a segregated investment vehicle which gives investors a pure exposure to the underlying asset and its returns.

Whilst investing in alternatives has always been significant for institutional investors and family offices, improved access in recent years for private investors has significantly broadened the investor base. Preqin’s Future of Alternatives 2025 survey found 81% of investors said they expect to increase allocations to alternatives.

In fact, Preqin estimates alternative assets under management to experience the fastest growth in the Asia-Pacific region with a compound average growth rate of 25.2% in the five years to 2025.

In recent years access to alternatives has improved with investment platforms such as iPartners providing wholesale investors with the opportunity to build a portfolio of alternative assets across managed funds and single-asset investment opportunities.

Cut out the volatility in your life

One advantage of alternatives being private market investments is they generally come with a lower level of price volatility when compared to public market investments. Whilst an exchange-listed investment comes with daily liquidity, it is also subject to the daily price volatility that comes from the exchange. Public market investments in alternatives do not change in value daily, however, they still have a periodic valuation process to ensure the asset remains appropriately priced.

Successful investments in alternatives are more about getting access to high-quality assets at the right price than they are about timing a market. This provides investors with the ability to invest consistently into new opportunities that have been sourced, selected, and structured by the team at iPartners when they are made available, without having to feel like they need to closely watch the daily price volatility of the general markets.

Diversification

The capacity of alternative investments to provide diversity is one of the key reasons investors are moving to them.

According to CFA Institute research, diversification is the most effective approach to decreasing portfolio risk. Alternative assets, such as real estate, commodities, private credit, private equity, and hedge funds offer significant diversification and can assist balance across an investment portfolio.

Promising Returns

Even during the pandemic, alternative sectors including real estate and commodities offered potential positive returns. According to Preqin, the average return on real estate investments in Q1 2021 (in the midst of pandemic lockdowns) was 1.7%, compared to -0.4% for the S&P 500 index. Private equity has also outperformed public markets in recent years. Investors might potentially increase their profits by diversifying their portfolios with alternative assets.

Unique opportunities

Alternative investments can give investors access to unique investment possibilities that are not available through regular investing. Whilst alternatives can come with lower levels of liquidity, for the investor with a medium-term outlook, illiquidity premiums available in the returns of alternatives can be highly beneficial to investors. The ability to take exposure to assets that would normally be only available to large institutional investors is a great benefit in alternatives.

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