Grab your passports — real assets are going global. Or, to be more precise, have gone global, and investors are jumping on for the ride.

Not long ago, investing in international markets was reserved only for those with a very high tolerance for risk. Private investors rarely considered the benefits of overseas investments, tending to be put off by the risks. It was even more rare for those investments to be put in a retirement portfolio, because those portfolios, by definition, were safe harbors. In addition, overseas investing was just too hard. How was the private investor expected to access opportunities in China, India or Germany?

But times have changed. Not only are global real assets something private investors and smaller institutional investors can now easily access through listed real assets companies and securities funds — they are being touted as something private investors should access to increase portfolio diversification and returns while de