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The Projected Growth of Alternative Assets

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This infographic is available as a poster.

Alternative Assets

Alternative Assets

This infographic is available as a poster.

The Projected Growth of Alternative Assets

When it comes to investing, the focus is typically on stocks and bonds. However, in recent years, many investors have turned their attention to another opportunity: alternative assets.

In fact, global assets under management (AUM) in alternatives are projected to grow by 62% from 2020-2025. In this Markets in a Minute from New York Life Investments, we explain what alternative assets are and which categories will see the most growth.

What are Alternative Assets?

Alternative assets are investments that fall outside of the traditional asset classes of stocks, bonds, and cash. They are broken up into the following asset classes:

  • Private equity: Investing in companies that are not publicly traded or listed on a stock exchange. This can also include the acquisition of public companies by a private investment fund or investor.
  • Private debt: Investing in companies in the form of debt as opposed to equity. Private debt is not typically financed by banks, nor traded or issued in an open market.
  • Hedge funds: Largely unregulated funds that can invest across a wide range of asset classes and instruments. These funds aim to ‘hedge’ risk and maximize profits regardless of which direction the market moves through long (buy) or short (sell) positions.
  • Real estate: The acquisition, financing, and ownership of real estate assets by private investment vehicles, funds, or firms. This includes residential, commercial, and industrial properties both at the time of original listing and when being sold between two parties afterwards.
  • Infrastructure: Investment in services and facilities considered essential to the economic development of a society. This includes energy, logistics, telecoms, transportation, utilities, and waste management.
  • Natural resources: Investment in the development, enhancement, or production of various types of natural resources. This includes agriculture, renewable energy, timberland, water, and metals.

In contrast to traditional markets, alternative assets are typically less liquid and less regulated.

Global Growth

According to Preqin, all alternative asset classes will see significant growth in global AUM. Here’s how the projections break down from 2020 to 2025:

 20202021P2022P2023P2024P2025PCAGR
Private equity4.4T$5.1T$5.9T$6.8T$7.9T$9.1T15.6%
Private debt$848B$945B$1.1T$1.2T$1.3T$1.5T11.4%
Hedge funds$3.6T$3.7T$3.8T$4.0T$4.1T$4.3T3.6%
Real estate$1.0T$1.1T$1.1T$1.2T$1.2T$1.2T3.4%
Infrastructure$639B$668B$697B$729B$761B$795B4.5%
Natural resources$211B$222B$233B$245B$258B$271B5.1%
Total$10.7T$11.7T$12.9T$14.1T$15.5T$17.2T9.8%

Private equity will grow the fastest, and will also see the highest growth in dollar terms. In fact, its proportion of alternative assets’ AUM is expected to rise from 41% in 2020 to 53% in 2025. Preqin predicts that this will be due to both strong performance and asset flows, with 79% of surveyed investors planning to increase their allocation to private equity.

Private debt is also expected to see strong growth. With greater risk appetite than banks, private debt funds could be active in emerging technologies such as pharmaceuticals and the remote working industry. These funds take on higher risk in anticipation of higher yield potential, an attractive proposition for investors amid low interest rates in many areas.

Similarly, investors will likely turn to real estate for its yield potential. Long-leased assets usually offer stable cash flows and indexed rents, making them one of the asset classes that may hedge inflation. However, the industry is projected to have the lowest compound annual growth rate, given the uncertainty facing office and retail spaces post COVID-19.

The Opportunities in Alternative Assets

Outside of investments such as liquid alternatives, alternative assets have typically only been accessible to institutional investors. However, recent regulatory changes by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) mean that private markets are opening up to individual investors if they meet certain criteria.

Alternative assets offer a number of compelling opportunities, including portfolio diversification, lower correlation with public markets, and potential outperformance. In fact, research has found that private equity was the best-performing asset class in a public pension portfolio, based on median annualized returns from 2010-2020.

According to Preqin’s projections, it appears investors are realizing this potential. While stocks and bonds will likely remain central to portfolios, alternative assets can help to broaden investors’ horizons.

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Markets in a Minute

What is the Success Rate of Actively Managed Funds?

For actively managed funds, the odds of beating the market over the long run are like finding a needle in a haystack.

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Actively Managed Funds

What is the Success Rate of Actively Managed Funds?

Over a 20-year period, 95% of large-cap actively managed funds have underperformed their benchmark.

The above graphic shows the performance of actively managed funds across a range of fund types, using data from S&P Global via Charlie Bilello.

Missing the Mark: Actively Managed Funds

Several factors present headwinds to actively managed funds.

  • Trading costs: First, fund managers will trade more often than passive funds. These in turn incur costs, impacting returns.
  • Cash holdings: Additionally, many of these funds hold a cash allocation of about 5% or more to capture market opportunities. Unlike active funds, their passive counterparts are often fully invested. Cash holdings can have the opposite effect than intended—dragging on overall returns.
  • Fees: Active funds can charge up to 1-2% in investment manager fees while funds that tracked an index passively charged just 0.12% on average in 2022. These additional costs add up over time.

Below, we show how active funds increasingly underperform against their benchmark over each time period.

Fund Type1 Year
% Underperformed
5 Year
% Underperformed
10 Year
% Underperformed
20 Year
% Underperformed
All Large-Cap 51879195
All Small-Cap 57718994
Large-Cap Growth 74869698
Large-Cap Value 59698587
Small-Cap Growth 80598597
Small-Cap Value 41819192
Real Estate 88627487

As we can see, 51% of all large-cap active mutual funds underperformed in a one-year period. That compares to 41% of small-cap value funds, which had the best chance of outperforming the benchmark annually. Also, an eye-opening 88% of real estate funds underperformed.

For context, Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway has beat the S&P 500 two-thirds of the time. Even the world’s top stock pickers have a hard time beating the market’s returns.

2020 Market Crash: A Case Study

How about active funds’ performance during a crisis?

While the case for actively managed funds is often stronger during a market downturn, a 2020 study shows how they continued to underperform the index.

Overall, 74% of over 3,600 active funds with $4.9 trillion in assets did worse than the S&P 500 during the 2020 market plunge.

Stage of 2020 CycleTime Period% Underperforming S&P 500
CrisisFeb 20 - Apr 30, 202074.2
CrashFeb 20 - Mar 23, 202063.5
RecoveryMar 24 - Apr 30, 202055.8
Pre-CrisisOct 1 2019 - Jan 31, 202067.1

Source: NBER

In better news, roughly half underperformed through the recovery, the best out of any market condition that was studied.

The Bigger Impact

Of course, some actively managed funds outperform.

Still, choosing the top funds year after year can be challenging. Also note that active fund managers typically only run a portfolio for four and a half years on average before someone new takes over, making it difficult to stick with a star manager for very long.

As lower returns accumulate over time, the impact of investing in active mutual funds can be striking. If an investor had a $100,000 portfolio and paid 2% in costs every year for 25 years, they would lose about $170,000 to fees if it earned 6% annually.

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Markets in a Minute

Ranked: The Largest Bond Markets in the World

The global bond market stands at $133 trillion in value. Here are the major players in bond markets worldwide.

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The Largest Bond Markets in the World

The Largest Bond Markets in the World

In 2022, the global bond market totaled $133 trillion.

As one of the world’s largest capital markets, debt securities have grown sevenfold over the last 40 years. Fueling this growth are government and corporate debt sales across major economies and emerging markets. Over the last three years, China’s bond market has grown 13% annually.

Based on estimates from the Bank for International Statements, this graphic shows the largest bond markets in the world.

ℹ️ Total debt numbers here include both domestic and international debt securities in each particular country or region. BIS notes that international debt securities are issued outside the local market of the country where the borrower resides and cover eurobonds as well as foreign bonds, but exclude negotiable loans.

Ranked: The World’s Top Bond Markets

Valued at over $51 trillion, the U.S. has the largest bond market globally.

Government bonds made up the majority of its debt market, with over $26 trillion in securities outstanding. In 2022, the Federal government paid $534 billion in interest on this debt.

China is second, at 16% of the global total. Local commercial banks hold the greatest share of its outstanding bonds, while foreign ownership remains fairly low. Foreign interest in China’s bonds slowed in 2022 amid geopolitical tensions in Ukraine and lower yields.

Bond Market RankCountry / RegionTotal Debt OutstandingShare of Total Bond Market
1🇺🇸 U.S.$51.3T39%
2🇨🇳 China$20.9T16%
3🇯🇵 Japan$11.0T8%
4🇫🇷 France$4.4T3%
5🇬🇧 United Kingdom$4.3T3%
6🇨🇦 Canada$4.0T3%
7🇩🇪 Germany$3.7T3%
8🇮🇹 Italy$2.9T2%
9🇰🇾 Cayman Islands*$2.7T2%
10🇧🇷 Brazil*$2.4T2%
11🇰🇷 South Korea*$2.2T2%
12🇦🇺 Australia$2.2T2%
13🇳🇱 Netherlands$1.9T1%
14🇪🇸 Spain$1.9T1%
15🇮🇳 India*$1.3T1%
16🇮🇪 Ireland$1.0T1%
17🇲🇽 Mexico*$1.0T1%
18🇱🇺 Luxembourg$0.9T1%
19🇧🇪 Belgium$0.7T>1%
20🇷🇺 Russia*$0.7T>1%

*Represent countries where total debt securities were not reported by national authorities. These figures are the sum of domestic debt securities reported by national authorities and/or international debt securities compiled by BIS.
Data as of Q3 2022.

As the above table shows, Japan has the third biggest debt market. Japan’s central bank owns a massive share of its government bonds. Central bank ownership hit a record 50% as it tweaked its yield curve control policy that was introduced in 2016. The policy was designed to help boost inflation and prevent interest rates from falling. As inflation began to rise in 2022 and bond investors began selling, it had to increase its yield to spur demand and liquidity. The adjustment sent shockwaves through financial markets.

In Europe, France is home to the largest bond market at $4.4 trillion in total debt, surpassing the United Kingdom by roughly $150 billion.

Banks: A Major Buyer in Bond Markets

Like central banks around the world, commercial banks are key players in bond markets.

In fact, commercial banks are among the top three buyers of U.S. government debt. This is because commercial banks will reinvest client deposits into interest-bearing securities. These often include U.S. Treasuries, which are highly liquid and one of the safest assets globally.

As we can see in the chart below, the banking sector often surpasses an economy’s total GDP.

Banking Sector

As interest rates have risen sharply since 2022, the price of bonds has been pushed down, given their inverse relationship. This has raised questions about what type of bonds banks hold.

In the U.S., commercial banks hold $4.2 trillion in Treasury bonds and other government securities. For large U.S. banks, these holdings account for almost 24% of assets on average. They make up an average 15% of assets for small banks in 2023. Since mid-2022, small banks have reduced their bond holdings due to interest rate increases.

As higher rates reverberate across the banking system and wider economy, it may expose further strains on global bond markets which have expanded rapidly in an era of dovish monetary policy and ultra-low interest rates.

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