On alternatives
"Alternatives" has been one of the buzzwords floating around my circles as of late. I'm always suspicious when some new fad pops up, but in the case of alternatives, I'm more amused than anything else; they've been around for quite a while, but as earning yields and interest rates (and, thus, future expected returns of stocks and bonds respectively) fell over the last couple decades, they started moving from "valuable" to "necessary". I'm more of the school of thought that sa