By Jian Zhang, CFA, Partner, Adams Street Partners. : Welcome to Portfolio for the Future! All About Alpha is now Portfolio for the Future, located here at caia.org. Private equity represents an important component of the alternatives allocation for an institutional portfolio. This is primarily due to the fact that private equity is complementary to traditional asset classes and has proven to be accretive to overall returns while offering important diversification from public equity and fixed income markets. However, certain unique characteristics of private equity can present significant challenges to asset allocation decisions when included in a traditional portfolio.