Traditionally, individual investors have diversified their portfolios using stocks and bonds. Stocks have been used to produce growth, while bonds have been used to produce income and reduce risk. However, today individual investors have other investment options that, until recently, were only available to large institutional investors. Included in these investment opportunities are absolute return strategies which are now available to individual investors through mutual funds and ETFs. By moving beyond the historic norm of stocks and bonds, individual investors can now invest a portion of their bond allocation in absolute return strategies instead. As a result, over the long term, individual investors will achieve better performance while maintaining similar equity risk.