A New Way To Understand, Explain, And Allocate
Alternative investments have moved from the sidelines to the mainstream of portfolio construction.
In 2025, the White House issued an Executive Order advocating for alts in the 401(k)s of 90 million American savers. In 2026, the Department of Labor proposed regulations to facilitate alts in target-date and allocation funds for these DC plans.
Yet the alts conversation has long focused on individual strategies in isolation: what each one does, not how they fit together.
The New Playbook for Alternative Investing offers a different approach: a practical framework built on the familiar language of football. Rather than treating alternatives as a separate sleeve, this framework positions them as integrated tools that can play complementary roles based on client goals and market conditions:
• Offense: growth
• Defense: income
• Special teams: diversification
• Complementary: integrated across the portfolio
This is Part 1 of a four-part series introducing the playbook.
We start with offense: growth-oriented strategies designed to move portfolios forward.
Just as offensive coordinators select plays based on risk tolerance and field position, advisors can deploy growth alternatives across a spectrum, from conservative runs to aggressive bombs.
Offense Is About Growth
Offense is about moving the ball downfield: driving growth, building wealth, and capturing appreciation over time. In portfolios, offensive strategies target capital gains, whether through public equities, private markets, or emerging opportunities in digital assets.
But not all offensive plays carry the same risk. Just as a football team alternates runs, passes, and deep throws strategically, advisors can deploy growth assets with varying levels of aggression depending on client circumstances and market conditions.
Here’s how offense works across three distinct plays: the run, the pass, and the bomb.
The Run: Seeking Compound Returns With Core Equity Exposure
The Play: The run is the foundation of offense: steady, reliable, and designed to gain yards consistently without excessive risk. It’s the play you call when you need to control the clock and maintain possession.
Investment Role: In portfolios, the “run” represents core equity exposure: stocks and equity hedge strategies that provide growth through equity beta or with some measure of risk management.
Assets And Strategies:
Stocks: Traditional long-only equity exposure delivers participation in economic growth and corporate earnings. It’s the most familiar and comfortable offensive tool for advisors and clients alike.
Equity Long/Short: Long/short equity strategies add a layer of risk management, seeking to capture equity upside while hedging downside exposure. These strategies can smooth the ride while maintaining the growth objective.
The Pass: Pursuing Extra Gains From Private Markets
The Play: The pass opens up the field. It’s more aggressive than the run, with higher potential reward, but it requires precision targeting, timing, and a willingness to take calculated risk.
Investment Role: Private markets and real estate offer the potential for outsized gains by accessing opportunities beyond traditional assets (commercial real estate, corporate buyouts, growth capital), with the trade-off of illiquidity in the underlying assets and longer holding periods.
Assets And Strategies:
Private Equity: Buyouts, growth capital, and middle-market investments target value creation through operational improvements, strategic repositioning, and long-term enterprise growth. The illiquidity premium may compensate patient capital.
Real Estate: Real estate investments, whether in private or listed vehicles or in equity or debt structures, provide growth potential tied to property appreciation, rental income, and development or turnaround opportunities.
The Bomb: Maximize Results With High-Octane Growth
The Play: The deep throw—the bomb—is the highest-risk, highest-reward play. It’s designed to change the game quickly, but it requires conviction, an appetite for risk, and a powerful arm.
Investment Role: At the outer edge of offensive strategies sit venture capital and digital assets: investments with the potential for exponential returns but accompanied by significant volatility and the real possibility of loss.
Assets And Strategies:
Venture Capital: Early-stage and growth-stage investments in private companies offer exposure to innovation and disruption. These bets can deliver multi-baggers, or flame out entirely.
Crypto/Digital Assets: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and blockchain infrastructure represent a new frontier. These assets provide exposure to technological transformation and decentralized finance, but advisors must navigate speculative fervor, regulatory uncertainty, and extreme price swings.
Reading The Field
The key is recognizing that no single play works in every situation. Market conditions change. Client circumstances evolve. Risk environments shift.
Advisors can:
• Run conservative equity strategies when clients need steady growth from something familiar with a lower likelihood of excess volatility.
• Pass to private markets when illiquidity premiums are attractive and clients have time horizons to match.
• Throw the bomb with venture capital or digital assets for clients with risk capacity and high-growth objectives.
The modern advisor isn’t locked into a single offensive scheme. You’re the coordinator, empowered to call the right play for the right moment.
What’s Next
Offense moves the ball forward, but no team wins on offense alone. In Part 2, we’ll explore defensive strategies: income-focused alternatives designed to manage risk and cushion drawdowns. In Part 3, we’ll cover special teams: uncorrelated strategies that can shift outcomes when offense and defense need something extra. In Part 4, we’ll put it all together: the advisor as coach, deploying the team across an ever-changing field.
This article is adapted from The New Playbook for Alternative Investing, a practical framework for deploying alternatives across growth, income, and diversification. Discover and download the complete playbook from Welton Investment Partners.
Bill Marr is head of business growth at Welton Investment Partners, and Chris Keenan is principal and director of marketing at Welton Investment Partners.