What Are Alternative Investments?
In the broadest sense, alternative investments are anything other than stocks and bonds, arbitrage, long and short selling and the like. Generally speaking, alternative investments typically involve private assets such as private equity, private credit, infrastructure and private real estate.
The nature of these types of investments has traditionally restricted them to the ultra wealthy and institutions because they are unregulated by the SEC. However, they are now being made available to less well-heeled investors because the profit potential is significant and it's increasingly being looked upon as unfair to make them the sole domain of the 1%.