(DailyAlts.com) Can alternative investments help advisors build more robust portfolios for their clients, or are they just hype? That’s the subject tackled by a study conducted by Pershing and Beacon Strategies, with the results compiled into a new white paper called Help or Hype: Advisor Perceptions of Alternative Investments. The study was released on June 4 at Pershing’s INSITE 2015 conference, and involved interviewing 1,200 advisors, broker-dealers, RIAs, and alternative investment managers. Its major findings include:

The majority of advisors plan to continue recommending alternative investments over the next year, even as alternatives have underperformed since the Financial Crisis; 73% of advisors surveyed said their clients had at least one type of alternative investment in their portfolios; 70% said they plan to maintain their current alternatives allocation recommendations over the next year; and more than half said they think clients should allocate between 6% and 15% of their portfolios to alternatives.

To read the entire article and white paper go to www.dailyalts.com