Real Assets

What are real assets?

Real assets are physical or tangible assets, such as infrastructure, real estate, natural resources and precious metals, whose value is based on their physical properties or utility.

Infrastructure

Assets necessary for a society to function, such as bridges, airports, electrical grids, water supply and telecommunications

Real Estate

Real estate

Commercial and residential assets around the world, including retail stores, office buildings, apartments, hotels and factories

Commodities

Raw materials including agricultural goods like wheat and coffee, energy resources like oil and gasoline, and metals like gold and copper

The value of real assets

As a very broad group representing different sectors and industries, real assets have historically offered attractive benefits to investors, including providing solid returns, overall portfolio diversification and acting as a hedge to inflation.

Solid historical returns

Real assets have provided attractive returns over the long term

calendar-year-performance-svg-for-real-assets-strategy-page.png

Sources: Morningstar and DWS as of 12/31/23. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Asset class representation: global real estate, FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Index; global infrastructure, Dow Jones Brookfield Global Infrastructure Index; commodities, Bloomberg Commodity Index; global natural resources, S&P Global Natural Resources Index; TIPS, Bloomberg U.S. TIPS Index; global equities, MSCI World Index; global bonds, Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index. Equity index returns include reinvestment of all distributions. Index returns do not reflect fees or expenses, and it is not possible to invest directly in an index.

Portfolio diversification*

Real assets have demonstrated low correlations with global stocks

** Global infrastructure shown for the period 9/30/08 to 12/31/23 due to index inception date. All other data shown for the period 12/31/02 to 12/31/23. Source: Bloomberg as of 12/31/23. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Asset class representation: global real estate, FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Index; global infrastructure, Dow Jones Brookfield Global Infrastructure Index; commodity futures, Bloomberg Commodity Index; natural resource equities, S&P Global Natural Resources Index; U.S. equities, S&P 500 Index; global equities, MSCI World Index. Equity index returns include reinvestment of all distributions. Index returns do not reflect fees or expenses, and it is not possible to invest directly in an index. Diversification neither assures a profit nor guarantees against loss. Correlation is a measure of how closely two variables move together over time. A 1.0 equals perfect correlation. A –1.0 equals total negative correlation

Inflation hedge

Certain real assets have historically acted as a strong hedge against rising inflation

Accelerating is calculated using sequential year-over-year percentage changes in inflation based on CPI.
**Global infrastructure returns shown from 9/30/08 to 12/31/23 due to index inception date. All other returns shown from 12/31/02 to 12/31/23. Sources: Bloomberg and DWS. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Asset class representation: global infrastructure, Dow Jones Brookfield Global Infrastructure Index; global real estate, FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Index; commodities, Bloomberg Commodity Index; commodity equities, S&P Global Natural Resources Index; TIPS, Bloomberg U.S. TIPS Index; global equities, MSCI World Index; global bonds, Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index. Equity index returns include reinvestment of all distributions. Index returns do not reflect fees or expenses, and it is not possible to invest directly in an index.

Our solutions

With 50 years of real asset experience, we are one of the world's largest alternatives managers with $123 billion in assets under management and an expansive suite of investment solutions (as of 12/31/23).