The first book to explain the new world of alternative investing, showing how anyone can use nontraditional options to significantly increase returns and lower risksThe worlds elite investors have long relied on alternative investments to produce superior returns. Until now, these strategies were the exclusive purview of institutions and the superwealthy, but today any informed investor can play the same game.A rainbow of investment optionstimber, start-ups, master limited partnerships (MLPs), hedged strategies, managed futures, infrastructure, peer-to-peer lending, farmland, and dozens of other nontraditional strategiescan provide dramatically better gains, with less total risk, than the standard choices. In The Alternative Answer, Bob Rice, Bloomberg TVs Alternative Investments Editor, leads an entertaining and easy- to-understand tour of this world, and suggests specific alternative investments for all four key jobs of a portfolio: safely generating more current income, decreasing risks of economic shocks, significantly increasing long-term profits, and protecting purchasing power over time.Regardless of experience or net worth, readers will learn exactly how to substantially improve investment performancein the same way that the worlds best investors already do. Stocks and bonds alone arent nearly enough. Investors need an alternative answer and now they have it.