Alternative Investments
Expanding Frontiers
Alternative investments are no longer “alternatives.” This book shows how they really work—and how to analyze them with clarity, rigor, and modern data-driven insight.
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About the Book
Alternative Investments: Expanding Frontiers provides a modern, analytically grounded introduction to the rapidly evolving world of alternative assets. Bridging academic research, institutional practice, and data-driven analysis, the book goes beyond asset-class definitions to explore how alternatives actually function within portfolios.
Readers are guided through private markets, hedge fund strategies, real assets, and liquid alternatives with a focus on return drivers, risk mechanics, structural design, and empirical evaluation. The text emphasizes intuition, transparency, and practical implementation—showing how modern quantitative tools and data can be used to assess performance, manage risk, and make informed allocation decisions.
Designed for graduate students, investment professionals, and analytically minded practitioners, the book balances conceptual clarity with real-world relevance, preparing readers to think critically about alternatives in an increasingly complex investment landscape.
Author
About the Author
Kathryn Wilkens is a quantitative researcher, educator, and product builder whose work sits at the intersection of alternative investments, data science, and financial technology. She is the founder of Pearl Quest, LLC, where she develops research-driven analytical frameworks and forecasting systems designed to translate complex data into actionable investment insight.
With more than 25 years of experience across finance, education, and quantitative research, Kathryn is known for making advanced methods—such as generalized additive models, mutual information–based feature selection, and machine-learning pipelines—both practical and interpretable for professional investors. Her work emphasizes rigor, transparency, and real-world applicability.
Kathryn teaches in the Master of Financial Analysis program at Rutgers Business School, where she helps graduate students bridge financial theory, empirical research, and modern quantitative implementation.
Previously, she served as Curriculum Director at CAIA Association and as an advisor to the Financial Data Professional (FDP) program, contributing to the development of global education standards in alternative investments and financial data analytics. She is a research associate with the Center for International Securities and Derivatives Markets (CISDM) and has authored peer-reviewed articles and more than 40 published research summaries connecting academic research with practitioner decision-making.
Beyond finance, Kathryn serves on the Board of Directors of the Coalition to End Homelessness, where she applies systems thinking and analytical insight to community-level challenges.
Contents
Table of Contents
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