There are
several major asset classes: Paper (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, currency), Commodities (silver, gold, oil), Businesses (creation, purchase or partnership as opposed to common stock ownership) and Real Estate (rental properties, flips, land development).
Interestingly, gold outperformed
several major asset classes in 2017.
Not exact matches
The most popular tend to be stocks and currency pairs; virtually any
major options broker will have
several choices for each
asset class to choose from.
Cash is one of the three
major asset classes and it serves
several legitimate purposes in a portfolio: it dampens volatility and provides liquidity.
There are plenty of ETFs available, and besides covering
major indices, they cover different sectors of the equity markets, different
asset classes (such as Fixed Income and Alternatives), specific sectors and industries, different currencies, particular market niches as well as
several different strategies (such as long and / or short ETFs).
Over the last
several years, I have worked as an associate on the NNNNNNN Equity Team and later moved on to a role that provides coverage for ETFs, mostly from a product perspective but also increasingly from an
asset allocation standpoint (i.e. portfolio construction, macro commentaries on
major and sub-
asset classes).