Alternative Assets: The Investment Category That Just Opened to Everyone

Alternative assets are investments that fall outside the traditional categories of stocks, bonds, and cash. They include private equity, infrastructure funds, real estate, commodities, hedge funds, and real asset funds. Historically, these assets have been available only to accredited investors, institutions, and the ultra-wealthy. Alexander Green’s ASI Fund presentation from The Oxford Club argues that this is changing, and the change is being driven by a real executive order.

Executive Order 14330, signed in August 2025, directs the Department of Labor to clarify that plan fiduciaries may include professionally managed alternative-asset funds in 401(k) lineups. This is a genuine regulatory shift that opens the door for ordinary investors to access alternative assets through their retirement accounts for the first time.

Why Alternative Assets Matter

Alternative assets matter because they have historically delivered returns that are not correlated with the stock market. When the S&P 500 goes down, private equity and infrastructure funds may still generate positive returns because their performance depends on different factors: business operations, infrastructure usage, real asset appreciation. This diversification benefit is why wealthy investors and institutions allocate significant portions of their portfolios to alternative assets.

Green uses two well-documented examples to illustrate the power of alternative assets inside tax-advantaged accounts:

Mitt Romney turned a $450,000 IRA into $100 million through investments in private equity, including Bain Capital deals. The IRA grew to extraordinary value because the alternative investments inside it compounded tax-free over many years. This is an outlier, not a typical outcome, and Green acknowledges this.

Peter Thiel turned $2,000 into $5 billion inside his Roth IRA by buying early shares of PayPal and letting them compound tax-free. Also well-documented, also an extraordinary outlier.

Green is careful to say: “I can’t promise you’ll see anything near this level of return. But this is what’s possible.” That is an honest disclaimer. The Romney and Thiel examples illustrate the power of the strategy, not a guarantee of specific returns.

The Gatekeeping Problem

Before EO 14330, the alternative asset market was effectively walled off from ordinary investors. To invest in a private equity fund, you typically needed to be an accredited investor, which means having a net worth of at least $1 million or annual income of at least $200,000. This requirement kept the majority of Americans out of what Green calls the highest-performing asset class.

Green frames this as “gatekeeping” by the top 1 percent. The political framing is strong, but the underlying point is accurate. Alternative assets have historically been available only to wealthy individuals and institutional investors. The returns from these assets, when they materialize, have accrued to those who already had capital. EO 14330 is designed to change that by allowing alternative-asset funds to be included in 401(k) plans, which are the primary retirement savings vehicle for most American workers.

For more on the executive order itself, see our EO 14330 article.

The ASI Fund as an Alternative Asset

The ASI Fund is Green’s specific recommendation for how to take advantage of the democratization of alternative assets. ASI stands for “Artificial Superintelligence,” and the fund is a picks-and-shovels vehicle targeting AI infrastructure: hyperscale data centers, advanced semiconductor fabrication, high-bandwidth networking, power generation, and cooling solutions.

The fund is structured to be accessible to ordinary investors. Green says you can “get in for less than $15,” which suggests a fund structure with a low minimum investment. You do not need to be an accredited investor. You do not need millions of dollars. All you need is a regular brokerage account.

This is the connection between alternative assets, EO 14330, and the ASI Fund: the executive order opens the regulatory door, the fund provides the investment vehicle, and the low minimum makes it accessible. For more on the fund itself, see our ASI Fund article.

The AI Infrastructure Connection

The ASI Fund is specifically focused on AI infrastructure, which Green calls “America’s New Industrial Revolution.” The structural forces behind this thesis are real:

  • The Stargate project is deploying $100 billion to build AI data centers.
  • Meta is building a Manhattan-sized data center.
  • Amazon’s Project Blue is under construction.
  • ChatGPT alone uses enough power to run 180,000 American homes every day.
  • AI energy demand is soaring as more workloads move to data centers.

The fund invests in the physical backbone that all AI systems need: data centers, semiconductors, power, and cooling. This is a picks-and-shovels approach that captures the AI buildout without having to pick the winning software company. For more on this approach, see our AI infrastructure fund article.

The Trump Connection

Green opens the presentation with Trump’s alternative investment income: “While President Trump’s official salary is $400,000 per year, his tax returns reveal he’s been collecting up to an additional $250,000 per month from one hidden source.” The source is alternative investments. Trump reportedly invested up to $25 million in the kinds of assets the ASI Fund targets.

The political angle is strong, but the investment thesis does not depend on politics. AI infrastructure is being built regardless of who is in the White House. The executive order is a regulatory enabler, not a political statement. For more on the full presentation, see our ASI Fund review.

Considerations

Alternative assets are a legitimate investment category with real diversification benefits. EO 14330 is a real regulatory shift. The ASI Fund is a real investment vehicle. The risks are the usual ones: past performance does not guarantee future results, the Romney and Thiel examples are extreme outliers, and the “get in for less than $15” framing oversimplifies how a fund actually works. But the directional thesis is sound, and the democratization of alternative assets is a genuine structural shift.

If you want to explore the full thesis, you can access the ASI Fund presentation through The Oxford Club.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.