Over the past two decades, some of the best and highest-yielding investments have been made by investors who recognized the potential of small-cap stocks.  You really don’t have to look very far to find small caps (market capitalizations ranging from $300 million to $2 billion) that have turned into multibaggers...
Globalization, the megatrend spawned by the physical connectivity of every corner of the world and solidified by digital connectivity, has once again come into sharp focus thanks to recent events such as Brexit, trade wars and the Trump administration’s effort to disrupt global supply chains controlled by China.  Yet, globalization...
Real estate thought it was going to breeze through the pandemic while it watched travel, retail and service industries plunge into COVID uncertainty, and while the industry isn’t crumbling, a visible slowdown will have to prompt change. The Spring 2020 real estate shopping season was pretty much a wash. Newly...
The COVID-19 crisis has packed a big wallop to the global economy that will likely be felt for years to come. Back in June, the World Bank sounded the alarm that the crisis was likely to plunge the economy into the worst recession since WWII. The dire warning has...
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered massive panic selling from February through March, killing the oldest bull market in stocks, while the economy collapsed into a deep recession. Quick and decisive action by the Fed to lower interest rates and inject the market with more cash as well as provide a huge...
A historical event without precedent in living memory, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the commodity markets, including metals and mining, in a variety of ways with many miners experiencing the downside of relying on global supply chains, specialization and ultra-lean operations.  Many mining operations have been disrupted through government-mandated shutdowns...
Since the dawn of civilization, humans have used the science of biotechnology extensively in the food industry, especially in fermentation techniques for brewing and cheese-making. But what began as recipes for food production has evolved into technologies to enhance everything from farming to pharmaceuticals, with modern biotechnology largely dealing...
With lawmakers reaching agreement on the debt ceiling, one of the winners in the negotiations could be wind and solar energy. The debt ceiling agreement paves the way for the building of interstate transmission lines which is key to Biden’s infrastructure agenda. Specifically, it would ease the permitting process for...
In the race to build a new generation of electric vehicles, the demand for certain rare earth minerals has skyrocketed.  Two critical rare earth minerals are Germanium and Gallium, and China is the largest supplier of these minerals. We covered the industrial applications of these minerals in a recent Global...
The End of Just-In-Time Manufacturing as we Know It Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing was initiated in the 1950s and 1960s by Toyota. The approach was developed as part of the Toyota Production System (TPS), which aimed to minimize waste and improve efficiency in manufacturing processes.  The concept of JIT revolves around producing...