Portfolio Diversification Including Art as an Alternative Asset
Alternative investment assets (also such as rare vintage and collectible items, expensive old high-quality alcohol, discontinued fashion, etc.) are a hit among wealthy investors, even though it is not easy to obtain direct or indirect exposure to diversified art investment(s) in a traditional finance kind of way. However, alternative assets are helpful in portfolio diversification as they last (if stored properly), usually appreciate in value (but sometimes not very predictably), and have a low correlation to traditional assets like stocks, real estate, gold, or fixed-income securities. Although alternative assets are highly illiquid and sometimes very challenging to value correctly, researchers are interested in them. We will closely look at one of the research papers that investigates the role of art in the portfolio, utilizing mean-variance optimization and less-used STL decomposition.