Invest in income-producing commercial real estate properties like office buildings and shopping malls, or residential apartment buildings. Designed to provide a regular stream of distributions. To maintain these payments, goal is to invest primarily in a diversified portfolio of income producing properties.

A mortgage investment corporation (MIC) like the RiverRock MIC is a pool of mortgages offered to investors as a security. The security is backed by mortgages which are secured against the real property mortgaged and it provides investors with an income stream by way of dividends. MICs are flow-through investment vehicles and must distribute 100% of net income before tax to shareholders. The dividends distributed by a MIC to its shareholders are taxed as interest income, in the hands of the shareholder. MICs may also flow capital gains to its shareholders.

Provide access to senior secured convertible asset based loans to public North American small cap companies with a focus on generating superior risk-adjusted returns and capital protection. Capital Protection fully supported by sufficient collateral and senior liens on critical assets of the borrower with a preference for self liquidating collateral. Equity Upside & Downside Protection by participating on upside to growing industries in rising markets and protecting your principal and receiving interest on loans in falling markets.

Short Term Notes offer you the opportunity to earn interest typically over the course of a 120 or 180 day term, similar to a short term GIC from that perspective. An additional feature is that you receive monthly interest payments at an annualized interest rate and your principal at the note’s maturity.

A structured note is a type of bond in which an issuer borrows money from investors with the promise to repay all of the principal at maturity. The typical term for a structured note is five to seven years, sometimes two years, with the interest payment usually made once at maturity. Interest payment is based on an underlying asset's performance over the term of the note and is variable. If the underlying asset's performance is negative it is possible that no variable interest payment will be made.

In some cases, the interest payment may exceed the return that could be achieved from direct investment in the underlying asset. In others, an underperforming asset may produce no return at maturity, despite the potential for a positive return if the investor had invested directly in the equity-linked portion of the investment.

Private equity is the broader term for investing in a private company instead of buying shares in a publicly traded company. Private equity is now one of the fastest growing alternative asset classes. One reason for the growth of private equities is that they offer higher returns than both publicly traded stocks and some other alternatives. However, private equity is also much riskier than either publicly traded stocks or other alternatives. Because private equity requires investors to lock up their money for several years before any return is realized, it tends to be very illiquid.

Provide access to senior secured convertible asset based loans to public North American small cap companies with a focus on generating superior risk-adjusted returns and capital protection. Capital Protection fully supported by sufficient collateral and senior liens on critical assets of the borrower with a preference for self liquidating collateral. Equity Upside & Downside Protection by participating on upside to growing industries in rising markets and protecting your principal and receiving interest on loans in falling markets.

Invest in income-producing commercial real estate properties like office buildings and shopping malls, or residential apartment buildings. Designed to provide a regular stream of distributions. To maintain these payments, goal is to invest primarily in a diversified portfolio of income producing properties.

Don't expect to get rich with gold. Use it as a hedge particularly in times of uncertainty and slow growth like recessions and high inflation. Some reasons why you may want exposure to gold include increasing instability in the U.S. dollar, significant short positions (betting against it’s growth), limited physical supply, increasing investment demand for physical gold and gold’s unique fundamentals like protecting a portfolio from currency devaluation.

Other precious metals offer a significant place in the overall allocation mixture of long-term investment portfolio with risk-reducing and return-generating properties. Precious metals came to be the forgotten asset class of last economic expansion that saw technology and growth companies taking centerstage. Now with higher debt and interest rates, a slow down has ensued. As a result, gold and silver mining companies face supply/demand imbalances that create an extraordinary opportunity for investors.

Despite growing talk of recession, there are no signs of weakness in demand for oil and gas on a global basis. Oil companies are going to be pumping high returns to investors for much longer than people realize. Invest primarily in equity and equity-related securities of companies that are involved directly or indirectly in the exploration, development, production and distribution of oil, natural gas, coal, or uranium and other related activities in the energy and resource sector.

Real assets play an important role int he economy. Real assets are generally defined as physical assets that include infrastructure and natural resources and can also include real estate. Depending on the type and mix, infrastructure, in particular, offer the potential for portfolio diversification with relatively low correlations to traditional asset classes, such as stocks and bonds.

Infrastructure assets can be related to a wide variety of physical assets that tend to play roles in helping economies operate efficiently. Some examples include:

• Traditional energy: oil rigs and natural gas pipelines e.g. Enbridge

• Renewable energy & cleantech: wind turbines, solar energy equipment, on-shore and off-shore wind farms, and battery storage

• Logistics: warehouses and data centers

• Telecommunications: mobile phone towers

• Transportation: airports, ports, toll roads and ships

• Utilities: power utilities, water utilities and waste management services

In order to encourage investment in the exploration and development of natural resources, the federal government has designated certain companies as principal-business corporations (PBCs). PBCs are companies in the resource sector including oil and gas, mining, renewable energy, and energy conservation. These PBCs are permitted to issue flowthrough shares. A flow-through share (FTS) is a special kind of share issued by a PBC to a shareholder under an agreement which specifies that eligible exploration and development expenses of the PCB will be “renounced” by the corporation to the shareholder.

Since large expenditures are usually involved in resource exploration and development, the PBC would typically have little revenue to offset the expenses against, thus the tax deductions could not be used. By issuing flowthrough shares, the PBC is able to monetize the tax deductions they cannot use. In turn, the shareholder can deduct the expenses from their other sources of income, thereby reducing their income taxes payable.

Flow-Through Limited Partnerships

The majority of flow-through shares are issued through private placements structured as limited partnerships. The limited partnership (LP) most commonly invests in the flow-through shares of many issuers.