News

Financial innovation is a feature of the investing world. In the not-too-distant past you had to pay $15 per trade or more to buy stocks in whole-share denominations. Nowadays, trades are almost always zero-commission, and you can buy fractional ownership of stocks through exchange-traded funds (ETFs). But innovation has not stopped there. Why buy a […]

Choosing where—and how—you want to live as you age is one of the most important personal and financial decisions. And there are many options, from independent living to assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing facilities. There are also Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) which offer it all on one campus. I sat down with […]

At the start of the global financial crisis in 2008, Spain fell into a prolonged recession, compounded by the European debt crisis in 2010-2012. The country’s real estate bubble burst and the ensuing fallout engulfed the banking sector, leading to a €100 billion bailout from the European Union. Unemployment spiked to around 27% by 2013, […]

Demographics is the study of population and the make-up of that population. Birth and death rates factor into this analysis as do the age and sex breakdown of the population. Some argue that if you know the demographics of the world, you can predict the future. Historically, population growth has driven greater output, increased overall […]

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is becoming widespread, and education is already feeling its impact. The technology will, without a doubt, have broad implications for how we acquire learning and educate our children and the workforce. First, the good: AI can be a huge boon to efficiency. A 2022 survey conducted by Merrimack College found that […]

The U.S. continues to have one of the highest car ownership rates in the world with approximately 90% of Americans owning at least one car and almost 25% owning three or more. A range of factors including high urban home prices, the nation’s dispersed geography, and underfunded public transit systems have all contributed to the […]

The idea that we can create machines that rival what we do as humans is scary stuff. We are not discussing factory robots which do repetitive things, day after day without ever getting tired. We are talking about machines which simulate human intelligence, machines which can actually learn, reason and problem solve. And then you […]

The recent release of Ben Affleck’s The Accountant 2 along with its predecessor are among the few exceptions to my belief that films that deal with finance focus primarily on times of turmoil or excess. While The Accountant franchise twists the relatively staid world of forensic accounting into a dangerous and exciting plot, most films […]

From decentralized utopia to meme coins and manias, fraud and crashes, and political grift, crypto has come a long way from its genesis. And yet, it endures. In fact, it’s back on top of the world, with Bitcoin near its all-time high versus the U.S. dollar. For our part, while the use cases of the […]

With tariff chaos and geopolitics dominating headlines, you would be forgiven for missing the news around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, you’d be forgiven for recognizing the names but not knowing what (who?) they are and what they actually do. We’ll get to that, but the story is that the Trump Administration is […]

Many investors try to get to Omaha once a year, or at least once in a lifetime, to see Warren Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. At 94, Buffett still is viewed as one of the greatest investors of all time, and still, he stays on stage for hours spouting truths so simple you […]

Travel and tourism took a big hit during Covid. The industry worldwide has been struggling ever since. The political climate in Washington is not helping. Our president’s choice words for other countries and their leaders has probably made tourists everywhere more wary of travelling to the U.S. So, what’s the future hold? As with most […]