Celebrities may soon find themselves out of an advertising side job when they need to shore up funds.   You don’t have to be a trustworthy figure like Tom Selleck to advertise reverse mortgages, and this is only effective for a dwindling demographic that still watches local TV.  It doesn’t take Jennifer...
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...
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...
2023 has been a slow year for IPOs, due largely to tightening monetary policies and a slowdown of global economic growth according to a report issued by Ernst & Young. While the IPO landscape is quiet at the moment, it is believed that IPO activity will pick up once...
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...
Every once in a while, word gets out about a looming shortage of a certain--usually niche--commodity. Natural resource companies, both large and small, then quickly “pivot” to said commodity, and the next thing you know a surge of investment interest and, frequently, commodity bubbles quickly follow. It’s a script that...
Imagine driving a car that runs clean, and emits pure water from its exhaust pipe. That’s the promise that hydrogen offers as a fuel source, and these vehicles may be commercially available sooner than you think.Hydrogen as a Green Energy Source Hydrogen is often considered a green energy source when...
Over the past 2 years Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been hammered as investors headed toward the exits. Major brokers were in flux in 2022 when Binance refused to buy out Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange. Some experts warned that Bitcoin could fall as low as $9,000. Simply put, the Bitcoin...
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 year 2020 is so far proving to be another bumper year for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency bulls. After a worrying slump following the global stock market crash in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as of end-July 2020, Bitcoin had staged a quick recovery to cross the $11k mark...