Our guide to Timber investing

ALTERNATIVES

Gabriel Micheli, co-manager of the Pictet-Timber fund, offers a guide to investing in this alternative asset class.

Not only do forests constitute the lungs of our planet, but their biological qualities make them unique investments. Investors waking up to the significance of environmental megatrends are turning to timber, a real, physical asset offering inflation protection and solid returns underpinned by powerful demand-led growth. For the past 30 years, timber investments have delivered attractive returns. Over the period 1990-2011, the NCREIF Timberland Index, a measure of investments in physical timber, returned 10.7% annually versus 5.7% for the MSCI World index The commodity has a key role to ...