Is Alternative Investing Worth Money To You?

Within the last few years, various alternative investment platforms have emerged in attempt to offer investors new ways to invest in high returns. Just recently, two sites, one called MotifInvesting.com, which invests in "motifs", and the other, called PredictIt.com, which invests in predictions surrounding politics and news, started gaining a lot of attention in my investment club in college. The idea for each is simple:

Motifs are essentially a cluster of "thematically weighted" or related stocks and ETFs that can be invested in as a whole. By buying the motif, you are given direct control of those stocks, but you are also giving the manager of the motif the permission to rebalance and change what stocks are in the motif portfolio. The idea is that when you have an idea for investment, you can find a motif that will have the right stocks already in it.

PredictIt, on the other hand, mimics a binary options/futures format where you buy a prediction investing in the outcome of an event in the future, and based on whether you are right or wrong, it will have an effect on the performance of that stock and ultimately determine whether the value of that stock will go up or down.

To me, each has an interesting perspective towards investing, but all in all, I do not think they are worth being used as a full-time investment platform. Each falls in a category where, although they offer interesting investment alternatives, they are just not practical enough for the average investor.

Let's start with motifs. Sure, they may allow you to specifically invest in a "theme" (be it aerospace or battling cancer), if you breakdown what they really are, it's no different than just finding the stocks and investing yourself. The commission structure is also a bit unreasonable in my opinion. Each trade has a commission of $9.95, and although it is comparable to platforms such as TDAmeritrade, it really offers none of the same advantages in tools or services. To me, its price point is a too high for a low capital investor, and for those that do have a lot of capital, I do not believe that they would be investing in something as unsophisticated as this anyway.

Next is PredictIt. In my opinion, since a lot of investors follow politics and the news anyway, this seems like a fun way to take some extra cash you may have left over, throw it in, and see how much you can make. Unlike binary options trading, there is not a lot of research that can be done to ensure a certain outcome, making this platform a lot like gambling. I think PredictIt themselves sum up perfectly what they really are, "[a] real-money game that tests your knowledge of political and financial events," and nothing more.

I really do enjoy seeing people take the initiative to try to invent new ways to invest. However, to me, these platforms are interesting at best, because I know it will be very hard for them to become a mainstream platform for serious investors.

What are some alternative investment platforms that you all have seen? What did you think about them?