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...
Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially cleared blockchain startup Blockstack to hold the first regulated security token offering (STO) under Reg A+ crowdfunding rules. This essentially means that Blockstack received regulatory approval to raise funds by selling Bitcoin-like, digital assets to the public. Just a day later,...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...