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...
Impact investing stopped being merely a hobby in 2018 when it hit $30 billion. Now it’s a megatrend with a global pandemic increasing the momentum further. It’s no longer about politics or morality. It’s about making money—plain and simple. And it’s disrupted Wall Street to the point that BlackRock is now...
As global automakers transition to manufacturing Electric Vehicles (EVs), it’s critically important that the raw materials are available in the supply chain to ensure battery quality and availability.  Lithium is a critical component in the production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries, and therefore, it is essential for the growth of...
Welcome back to The Market Pulse, your weekly dose of financial wisdom and wit. Today, we're turning our attention to the AI chip arena, where a fascinating drama is unfolding. Nvidia, the current champion, is basking in the limelight, fueled by the insatiable demand from tech titans like Microsoft and...
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...
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...
Big Pharma companies have built empires out of human pain without managing to come close to addressing the number one cause of disability in the world: Depression, a disease that costs the economy a trillion dollars in lost production every year.  But while Big Pharma is turning over billions in...
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...
The Return of the Commodities Supercycle Welcome to the second full week of 2026, and if you thought the markets were going to ease into the new year with a gentle stretch and a yawn, you were sorely mistaken. We are seeing a mix of old-school geopolitical tension and new-age...