Why the Rich Get Richer:Exotic and complicated investments, unavailable to the rest of us, help explain . . .

Value chain arbitrage. Pair trades. Seagulls. Restructuring plays. Forget hedge funds. These are the true exotics of the investment world. Chances are you have never heard of them. Chances are better that you will never have access to them.

Only the rich, the liquid rich, get to play on this field. The rest of us, with our brokerage accounts and mutual funds, can heed the dusty old advice: Diversify, stay in for the long term, and forget about stock picking, because you will fail and look like a fool in the process.

But show up with $50 million and you can toss the humdrum out the window and sit down in a cozy dining room with Chris Wolfe, chief equity strategist at the J.P. Morgan Private Bank on Park Avenue. Sport that kind of cash and you can order filet mignon from a tuxedoed waiter and chat about going long on the Norwegian kroner and short on the yen.