The AI Boom Needs Real Assets to Survive. This ETF Lets You Profit From Both.

The market’s been crazy in the last couple of years.

With the AI boom, some companies have shot through the stratosphere, breaking through new highs and reaching valuations that, frankly, beggar belief.

That’s why many investors are looking at parts of the market that aren’t entirely dependent on the same growth-stock narrative. But real assets aren’t just an alternative to AI-heavy tech stocks. They may also be part of the same story.

AI doesn’t scale on software alone. It needs power, infrastructure, metals, minerals, energy, and physical buildout. That’s where real assets come in.

Real assets include commodities, gold, energy, infrastructure, natural resources, and real estate-linked investments. These are areas that can behave very differently from high-multiple tech stocks, especially when inflation is sticky, interest rates stay higher for longer, or investors start questioning how much they’re willing to pay for future growth.

That’s the basic idea behind the VanEck Real Assets ETF (RAAX). Instead of betting only on companies priced for perfection and sensitive to sudden price slumps from simple expectations misses, RAAX gives investors a way to own assets more directly tied to the physical economy.

And in a market where parts of tech have started to look massively stretched, that kind of diversification may be worth a closer look.

David Schassler, VanEck’s head of multi-asset solutions and portfolio manager for the VanEck Real Assets ETF, frames the argument around a simple point: the AI boom still depends on the physical economy.

“We are in a technology supercycle driven from AI,” Schassler said in an interview. “The barriers to scale are largely in how do we build it, and that’s where real assets come in.”

His view is that the next phase of AI growth won’t just be about software, chips, or cloud platforms. It’ll also require infrastructure, power, metals, minerals, and energy.

“A really simple way to think about it is, the new world doesn’t happen without the old world building it,” Schassler said. “That’s where real assets fit.”

VanEck Real Assets ETF Explained

First, let’s break down the ETF to get a good idea of what it represents. The VanEck Real Assets ETF is designed to give investors diversified exposure to real assets, including areas tied to global growth, inflation protection, infrastructure demand, and capital preservation.

The ETF has a three-fold pitch:

• Inflation protection through resilient assets
• Adaptive risk management based on current market conditions
• Easier reporting via Form 1099

Inflation protection is pretty straightforward. The ETF focuses on asset classes that have historically held up better during periods of rising inflation, such as commodities, energy infrastructure, real estate, and natural resource companies.

These assets tend to perform better against inflation because they’re directly tied to the prices of real-world goods and services. However, investors shouldn’t treat real assets as automatic protection in every downturn. They can help diversify a portfolio during inflationary or macro-driven regimes, but they can still be volatile.

Schassler argues that RAAX shouldn’t be viewed only as an inflation hedge. In his view, real assets can also give investors exposure to global growth, reshoring, infrastructure spending, and geopolitical risk.

“It’s not only a hedge, but it’s a mechanism to benefit from global growth,” Schassler said.

The next pillar, adaptive risk management, is where the ETF distinguishes itself from your typical real-asset funds. Instead of a rigid allocation, VanEck’s portfolio managers can shift exposure to more favorable sections of the real-asset market as needed.

Schassler described RAAX as a diversified real-assets strategy built around three broad categories: growth-oriented real assets, income-generating real assets, and capital-preservation assets such as gold.

“We invest in three categories of real assets,” he said. “Growth-oriented real assets, which are primarily commodities, natural resource equities; income-generating real assets, think of things like MLPs, REITs, infrastructure in place; and the third group is capital preservation, likely gold bullion and a little bit of gold equities.”

That gives RAAX a broader mandate than simply owning a basket of inflation-sensitive assets. It’s meant to allocate across different parts of the real-assets market depending on the environment.

And finally, the Form 1099 angle. Typically, real-asset investments issue K-1 tax forms to investors. Anyone with experience with those forms knows how much of a pain they can be. Income is broken down into categories, requiring investors to enter it in different parts of their tax returns.

Helpful ETF Metrics Investors Need To Know

Now, before investors look at RAAX as a potential portfolio diversifier, it’s worth checking a few of the ETF’s key metrics.

As of May 11, 2026, the fund has total net assets of $931.87 million. That gives investors a quick sense of the ETF’s size and market adoption. RAAX isn’t a massive ETF, but it’s also not a tiny, brand-new fund with no track record.

RAAX has a gross expense ratio of 0.89% and a net expense ratio of 0.69%. Those are higher than the traditional rate, but they do come with actively managed funds.

Then, the fund has a net asset value of $42.30, which is the per-share value of all the assets the ETF holds after subtracting liabilities. 

Since the ETF is trading at around $42.70, it’s fairly valued relative to its NAV. One thing to note: there was a recent name change from “Vaneck Inflation Allocation ETF” to “VanEck Real Assets ETF,” which better reflects the fund’s broader role.

Then there’s the yield. RAAX had a 30-day SEC yield of 2.22%. That’s the forward-looking yield to consider if you want to jump into an ETF. That’s a reasonable rate for a real-asset ETF, though not really the selling point.

Investors should view RAAX less as a pure income product and more as a diversified real-assets allocation aimed at inflation protection, global growth exposure, and portfolio diversification.

Current Holdings

As of May 8, 2026, the ETF’s holdings consist of a diversified mix of commodity, energy, infrastructure, utility, industrial, and precious metal funds, with its largest positions concentrated in commodity strategy ETFs and gold-related assets.

For investors, that means the ETF is not relying on just one inflation hedge or market theme. Instead, it spreads exposure across multiple real asset categories that may perform differently depending on economic conditions.

Schassler said the fund’s allocation process is designed to lean into areas showing strength while avoiding pockets of persistent weakness.

“We believe the markets are very efficient but not perfectly efficient,” Schassler said. “Therefore we use momentum, meaning that if something’s performing, it’s not an accident. If something is performing poorly with a lot of volatility, that’s not an accident either.”

That active process can also mean trimming positions even when the team still likes the asset. Schassler pointed to gold as an example.

“We were very bullish on gold. It became an outsized position from how much risk it was contributing within the portfolio,” he said. “Then it became technically overbought. So we trimmed gold even though we were very bullish on it.”

That’s an important distinction for investors. RAAX isn’t just a static basket of real assets. It’s an actively managed strategy that can rotate between gold, commodities, energy, infrastructure, natural-resource equities, and other real-asset-linked investments depending on market conditions.

Schassler put it more simply: “RAAX is the easy button for real asset investing.”

Potential Risks

Now, diversification is a good strategy for a balanced portfolio, but it does come with some downsides.

The primary risk with RAAX is that real assets can still be highly volatile, even when they’re tied to physical assets.

Commodities, gold, energy stocks, infrastructure companies, natural resource businesses, REITs, and MLP-related investments can move sharply in response to inflation data, interest rates, economic growth, commodity prices, and geopolitics. We’ve been getting a lot of geopolitical shakeups in the last few months.

Another concern is that inflation could suddenly cool. If that happens, the appeal of real assets can dry up fast. If interest rates stay elevated, real estate and infrastructure-related assets could come under pressure.

Granted, the fund’s active management can mitigate some of those risks by reallocating capital across asset classes as needed, but there’s always a limit to what can be adjusted at certain times. And, of course, while I’m sure VanEck’s portfolio managers are very good at their job, there’s never a 100% assurance that they’ll always make the correct decision 100% of the time.

Schassler was clear that investors shouldn’t think of RAAX as a risk-free hedge.

“I think the best way to think about real asset risk is through the lens of equity-type risk,” he said. “Even though it’s differentiated, even though the sources of return and the sources of the risk profile are different, the aggregate volatility profile is very comparable.”

In other words, RAAX may help diversify a portfolio, but it doesn’t eliminate market risk.

And finally, investors shouldn’t assume RAAX will automatically protect them in every downturn. Real assets can help cushion the impact of inflationary pressures and help diversify your exposure across the market.

However, like every asset, it’s still at risk of sell-offs during liquidity shocks and recessions.

Is RAAX for you?

The VanEck Real Assets ETF isn’t a simple “buy because inflation exists” investment. It’s better viewed as a targeted diversification tool for investors who want exposure to commodities, gold, energy, infrastructure, natural resources, and real estate-linked assets without having to build that allocation piece by piece.

RAAX could make sense for investors concerned about sticky inflation, elevated valuations in growth stocks, or overexposure to one part of the market. But the case isn’t only defensive. If AI, data centers, reshoring, and infrastructure spending keep driving demand for power, metals, minerals, and physical assets, real assets could also be tied to the next stage of global growth.

At the same time, RAAX isn’t risk-free. Real assets can be volatile, the fund’s expense ratio is higher than many broad index ETFs, and its performance will still depend heavily on macro conditions, commodity prices, interest rates, and the portfolio managers’ allocation decisions.

For Schassler, the case comes down to broadening the traditional portfolio mix. He said the old 60/40 portfolio was built for a different era, one defined by falling interest rates that helped both stocks and bonds. In today’s environment, he argues investors may need a broader allocation.

“What we’re saying is instead of owning a 60/40 portfolio, the average investor is better suited owning a 55/35/10, which is 55% equities, 35% fixed income, 10% diversified real assets,” Schassler said.

That doesn’t mean RAAX should replace stocks or bonds entirely. It means investors may want another sleeve in the portfolio that behaves differently from both.

“This is a period of time that we think not only rewards, but demands diversification,” Schassler said.

So, RAAX may be worth a closer look for investors who want a more balanced portfolio with exposure to the physical economy. But it’s probably best treated as a complementary position rather than a core holding, and investors should weigh the fund’s diversification benefits against its costs, volatility, and sensitivity to changing inflation trends.