Forests are a treasure, a good investment, too

Ordinary investors can now put money into timber without going into the woods

Trees don’t watch the stock market. Forests keep growing — and potentially increasing their value — even when inflation surges or the market swoons.

Big investors, like university endowments and insurance companies, have long allocated money to timberland in places like Oregon’s fir and spruce forests, Georgia’s pine plantations and Appalachia’s hardwood groves.

Until a few years ago, retail investors were mostly shut out of this market. The deals were too big, involving thousands of acres and tens of millions of dollars.

That changed over the last 15 years with the introduction of two timber-focused ETFs — the iShares Global Timber & Forestry