Aging infrastructure across the U.S. carries real risk of failure, but Fred Hubler sees that as an opportunity: investors can help fix it while building wealth of their own through what he considers a compelling alternative investment. He breaks the space down into several categories – energy (power plants, storage, transportation, and processing), transportation (toll roads, airports, marine ports, and …
Housing affordability struggles among millennials are fueling a new asset class, according to Fred Hubler: single-family build-to-rent communities, built through 3-5 year programs to build, lease up, and sell. As millennials increasingly reach their family-forming years, tight housing supply and rising prices are pushing many toward renting spacious single-family homes instead of buying. He backs this up with data: the …
Alternative investments keep growing, and Fred Hubler breaks down the practical question most investors actually face: how do you choose one? He identifies four basic ways to access anything beyond stocks and bonds – private syndication, going through an advisor via an RIA, going through an advisor via a broker-dealer, or investing directly (only realistic if you’re big enough to …
Getting access to good alternative investment deals may come down to who you know, and Fred Hubler makes the case that a strong network functions like real estate’s “location, location, location” for wealth building. He argues that being around people who are already investing in these deals helps others get exposed to the same opportunities, benefiting everyone in the circle. …
Commercial real estate has been feeling real pressure from the rapid rise in interest rates, and Fred Hubler doesn’t sugarcoat it: some of the safest multi-family programs had to be written down by 20-30%, with riskier multi-family programs faring even worse. He also cites CBRE data showing a global office vacancy rate of 12.9% at the end of March, nearly …
Fred Hubler makes an unusual comparison in this piece: Taylor Swift’s career, he argues, is essentially a masterclass in how alternative investments work, and he lays out ten specific parallels between her approach and the strategies alternative investors use. The first parallel is being uncorrelated with traditional markets. Just as most alternative investments aren’t tied to the public stock market, …
Most investors know companies can be public or private, and that businesses sell either common or preferred stock, but Fred Hubler points to a lesser-known option: private preferred stock, which a public company can also issue. Unlike common stock or public preferred stock, which are both exposed to daily market fluctuations, private preferred stock carries all the benefits of a …
New asset classes rarely come along, but Fred Hubler flags one worth a closer look: the collateralized loan obligation, or CLO. Though CLOs date back to the 1990s, when banks and insurers first used the structure for regulatory capital relief, the market has since grown into a $1 trillion industry in the U.S., with product sponsors now opening access to …
Advisor recommendations of alternative investments have more than doubled in just four years, according to a survey Fred Hubler cites, jumping from 25% in 2020 to 55% in 2024. Still, he notes some holdouts remain: 24% of survey respondents hadn’t recommended a non-traded alternative product in the prior year. Hubler breaks down what’s driving advisors toward alternatives, in order of …
Rising interest rates and a shrinking Federal Reserve balance sheet have investors hunting for alternative strategies, and Fred Hubler points to an unexpected beneficiary: gas stations and convenience stores. While most real estate investors focus on multifamily, office, retail, and industrial properties, he argues these overlooked assets are emerging as top contenders in the alternative real estate space. He explains …