A friend recently asked his financial adviser if he would help with investing in some fine wine, to which the financial adviser simply laughed. He then asked for advice on buying some Gold bullion to which he was offered some Gold funds and ETF’s but he wanted physical Gold that he could take delivery of. His adviser doesn’t see that people are no longer going to invest in some structured product that they don’t understand.

In some countries as high as 90% of people with investment capital say that they would not want advice from financial advisers on how and where to invest.

I would go further to say that in fact most people, whether they are financially literate or not, want to invest a decent portion of their savings in real tangible assets that they can touch and feel. This has been one of the drivers behind the property market over the last couple of decades; unfortunately the leverage and debt in the property market may take some time to play out.

But investing in real assets is something that the financial institutions have not been facilitating, because there’s lots more money to be made by peddling paper securities and things that don’t really exist.

The innovation in the financial market has been concentrated in the wholesale institutional markets. We now need innovation in the real markets that provide investment and financial products for real people.

Ralph Hazell is CEO of www.mycommodity.com