What Is The Investment Opportunity Filter™?

How do you determine whether an alternative asset investment opportunity is worth looking into further?

As an investor, you must understand your skillsets, capabilities, knowledge, and understanding of asset classes and investing. What assets and asset classes do you know and understand? We have all heard the cliche, “Invest in what you know and understand.” What are your investment goals? What are you looking to accomplish? 

You also have to know your own investor DNA and investor profile. What is your risk tolerance? Are you looking to invest for cashflow, tax benefits, and reducing your current taxes? Do you want the asset to appreciate significantly and get a nice windfall when you exit the investment? Do you like to leverage the skillsets, capabilities, networks, and capital of others, or do everything yourself?

By investing directly in alternative investment projects, investors can generate income, receive tax benefits, get an excellent appreciation for the asset invested with proper operations and management, and leverage other operators, sponsors, and investors’ skill sets, capabilities, networks, and capital.

Sometimes, investors want to achieve one outcome more than the other, and sometimes, investors are looking to accomplish all four outcomes.

I created The Investment Opportunity Filter™ to help investors filter alternative investment opportunities to determine if they want to explore it further.

The Investment Opportunity Filter™ consists of the four filters of cashflow, tax benefits, appreciation, and leverage.

Let’s explore the different filters.

Cash Flow:

Does the investment opportunity generate income? How quickly? Are distributions paid monthly, quarterly, and or annually? When will you receive the invested capital back? The great aspect of cashflow is that the investment pays you to own it.

Tax Benefits:

What tax benefits does the investment provide? Does the investment legally reduce your taxes on active or passive income? Do you need to have special designations to benefit from the tax benefits?

Appreciation:

Does the investment opportunity provide the ability for the asset’s value to appreciate and continue to appreciate with efficient operations and management? How much of the upside potential do you, as the investor, get to participate in? Is the upside capped or unlimited?

Leverage:

Do you have the ability to leverage the skill sets, capabilities, knowledge, partners, teams, networks, and financial capital of operators, sponsors, and other investors, or are you going to have to do everything yourself?

The Investment Opportunity Filter™ can help you quickly determine what alternative asset investment opportunities to pursue based on your needs. 

You will find that sometimes you need one of these four benefits more than the other three, and sometimes you need all four benefits.