I guess my first thought is that $275k 2003 dollars is waaaay more than I would require to live on comfortably for the rest of my days, and 2040 is a lot longer than I would be willing to wait to retire, but to each his own, I suppose.
You happy with the "core" portfolio? What is in it, out of curiosity?
On the plus:
1. These might be OK in moderation, but they are likely to be a very bumpy ride and leverage cuts both ways. Probably not my first choice for a shoot-the-moon bet, but better than some of your other listed options.
2. The big drawback to futures is that you may have to post a LOT of collateral in a hurry of things go wrong. I'm not sure I'd be ahppy with that risk.
3. Do yourself a favor and skip it. The good managers don't want to deal with small, retail investors like yourself. You will also have a hard time discerning the good from the bad.
4. If you stumble across one of these and it is a good opportunity, that's great. But there are a lot of potential issues that you would have to be comfy with (individuals running it, lack of control, no liquidity, risk of fraud, etc.).
5. Eh, not likely to provide the kinds of returns you are looking for.
6. Maybe OK if you find the right property, but how do you propose to do so?
Other ideas:
If I were looking to take big risks for big rewards, I would consider the following.
- Options and LEAPS: buy long term, out of the money call options/LEAPS on names you like or on specific index ETFs. Very little risk of blowing yourself up, and high risk, high reward.
- Invest in leveraged companies: You;d have to do the work, but if you assembled a portfolio of well chosen individual names that have a lot of debt and a low stock price, when things go well for leveraged companies, they go REALLY well for the investors.
- Closed end fund arbitrage: There are lots of closed end funds trading at a discount to NAV and sometimes there are reasons why the discount might close. Check out what is going on with PPT, PIM, PYM, PCF, and other Putnam funds. If you went long a CEF trading at a discount and shorted a similar ETF, you would be hedged against the underlying assets, possibly levered, and potentially set up for nice gains if teh discount to NAV closes.
- Start-up banks: Banks are fundamentally levered animals and can post big gains when things go well. I suspect that if you assembled a collection of start-up bank stocks like the ones here:
http://www.bankipo.com/ you would see excellent returns over time, assuming you were willing to wait and endure illiquidity.