Assessing assets

When considering the range of asset classes available to investors, it is important to decide who the audience is. For the purposes of this piece it is the ordinary investor that concerns us, so I am excluding direct investments in stocks and shares (which require a broker), as well as the more exotic investment opportunities such as foreign exchange (FX) funds, hedge funds and the like. Those asset classes would acceptably be of greater interest to a more sophisticated investor. However, there is more than enough in the mainstream of pooled vehicles to offer the majority of investors choic...