For many years, investor motivations for considering real estate have included its characteristic stable income, strong historical relative performance across multiple cycles, and potential diversification benefits when held with other asset classes in a portfolio.

It was the late novelist and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson who said: “Convictions make us convicts.”

It’s a generalization. Some convictions are timeless. But there are many convictions that people cling to despite decades of mounting evidence to the contrary. Among that group are people — including at least one presidential candidate — committed to going back to the gold standard because they believe it to be the elixir that will solve all of our economic problems.

When Russell Investments expressed interest in Brian Meath coming to work for the giant Seattle-based global asset manager, the young quantitative analyst thought his riposte was rather cheeky: Sure, if I can work on global equities from your London office.

Rather than regarding his reply as high-handed, the Russell Investments’ recruiter on the case told Meath that he could begin covering global equities immediately and the firm would relocate him to London in less than a year.

Score a victory for the brashness of youth.

Most in the investment world have heard how David Swensen, chief investment officer at Yale, has left his university well endowed, expanding its coffers from $1 billion when he was hired in 1985 to $23.9 billion in June 2014.

His investment strategy, since termed the “endowment model,” expanded the purview of a traditional 60/40 stocks and bonds portfolio to include alternative assets, namely hedge funds, private equity and real assets. The model also focused on maximizing the inherent value of an endowment’s perpetual investment horizon by investing in illiquid assets that can, over time, provide an above-market return.

Every decision he made seemed to come up roses. In the decade ended June 2008, a period in which the S&P 500 delivered only 1.95 percent returns annually, his strategy yielded a per annum return of 16.3 percent.

Public equity markets have been volatile recently, with a lot of downward movement. But even as stock markets have declined — including public real estate equities — private real estate values have appeared to hold steady.

Since early 2015, valuations for public and private real estate have diverged, especially in the U.S. markets, where, according to Peter Zabierek, CEO of Presima, “the divergence is the most striking and has been for a while.”

In 1979 I started pursuing a career as an artist. Alas, the prospect of many years of financial suffering was not very appealing, so I decided to go to law school and learn to represent artists in matters of contracts, tax, estate planning and investments. During the intervening decades I have enjoyed a 34-year career advising high-net-worth clients (including artists) on all matters of wealth planning.

The oil supply glut has deepened these past few weeks since OPEC decided not to restrict crude production, citing expectations for an expansion in global demand of 1.3 million barrels per day in 2016 alongside a contraction in non-OPEC supply. In the United States, mild weather and still-elevated unconventional production are contributing to the market’s oversupply, depressing prices.

Underlying real estate property fundamentals are healthy and asset valuations are high. However, interest rates are moving higher and a market misalignment has been created where many REITs are trading below net asset value. Tax, policy and legislative changes are also helping set the stage for REIT activity this year. With all this in mind, Trepp LLC has listed some trends that it thinks will characterize the REIT market in 2016.

Aerospace, defense and advanced technology company Lockheed Martin announced that it had concluded a deal to buy 30 megawatts of solar power from Duke Energy Renewables, a Business Renewables Center sponsor and part of Duke Energy.

Usually snow is not something toll-road operators welcome. It keeps people off the roads. But in Colorado the rules about snow and roads are a little different. The state is one of a handful in the United States that is increasingly turning to private investment to help deliver and maintain infrastructure, including toll roads and lanes.

The fact that gold climbed to more than $1,100 per ounce during January and has stayed there since — on the back of a rocky Chinese stock market, North Korea’s announcement that it detonated a hydrogen bomb, and rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran — proves that gold still retains its status as a safe haven among investors.