The year 2025 has been uneven for investors, featuring tenacious wars and geopolitical tensions, sluggish global growth, and vacillating trade policies from Washington, D.C.

In the United States, market denizens each passing quarter are warned an economic recession is imminent. As of mid-year, interest rates were creeping higher, not easing, as hoped for in January forecasts.

Investors of all stripes are seeking pathways to minimize risk, maximize returns and add ballast to portfolios in what appear to be particularly unpredictable asset markets.

High-net-worth investors (HNWI) too are seeking some refuge from relatively modest inflation-adjusted bond yields, and a Wall Street that in 2025 has developed more potholes and roadblocks than open lanes.

That same HNWI segment has grown spectacularly in recent decades, to where there are an estimated 6 million financially well-endowed individuals in the United States in 2025, defined as those with investable we