The pandemic boosted e-bike sales by 145 percent from 2019 to 2020, more than double the growth of traditional bikes. Americans bought roughly 500,000 e-bikes in 2020, compared to about 210,000 plug-in automobiles, and that uptick is expected to continue. One report has the global e-bike market growing from $32.5 billion in 2020 to $53 billion by 2025, for annual compound growth of 9.9 percent. Deloitte expects 300 million e-bikes on the world’s streets by 2023. (Business Research Co., The Economist, New York Times, NPD Group)

Meat of the matter: Tyson Foods plans to spend about $1.3 billion to automate parts of its production lines over the next three years to offset labor shortages that have left many of its processing plants understaffed this past year. The Arkansas-based meat giant already invested $70 million during 2021 to automate some of its processes and expects to save about $450 million by the end of its 2024 fiscal year from reduced labor costs and increased production from its automation plans. (Wall Street Journal)

REITs new balance of power: U.S. retailers closed nearly 15,000 shops in 2020, and by mid-October 2021, with people attached to remote work, offices were only one-third full. The shifting sands of real estate property types is reflected in the changing composition of the 10 largest U.S. REITs. A decade ago, the most valuable REIT was Simon Property Group, the country’s biggest mall owner. Today it is American Tower, a fast-expanding owner of tens of thousands of phone towers around the world. Five of the top 10 REITs currently manage either data centers or mobile towers. (The Economist)

Financial firms get app happy: The investments wealth advisory firms are making in mobile apps are starting to pay off, but the financial advice industry still has a long way to go. Three-quarters of wealth management firms made feature enhancements to their apps over the past year, up from 44 percent in 2020. The upshot: Overall customer satisfaction surged nine points during 2021, as measured by J.D. Power. As a result, the number of customers using their wealth management apps daily increased four percentage points. (Financial Planning, J.D. Power)

Cloud number 9: Larry Ellison’s net worth soared $12 billion after Oracle Corp. reported a surprise increase in revenue from sales of its cloud-computing software. Ellison ranks ninth among the world’s richest people with a $119.5 billion fortune, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ellison, 77, owns more than 40 percent of Oracle, the enterprise software company that he co-founded in 1977. While his Oracle shares make up around 75 percent of his fortune, Ellison also owns about a $15 billion stake in electric automaker Tesla. (Bloomberg)

Long-haul housing: Housing bulls on Wall Street are making the argument the housing boom could last for a decade, driven by the millions of millennials who have reached a point in their lives when they are seeking single-family homes in the suburbs and exurbs. (Barron’s)

Rising rents: Average U.S. apartment rent increased by $23 in October to $1,572, a record high, and asking rents were up 13.7 percent year-over-year. The continued growth is driven by an ongoing surge in demand that started in the spring and has yet to subside. (Yardi Matrix)

The language of money: Who knew getting the English language right could be so valuable? A $200 million investment round for grammar-checking tool Grammarly not only boosted the company’s value to $13 billion, it also turned its founders, Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko, into billionaires. The Ukrainian-born entrepreneurs, who started the automated writing assistant in 2009 with the help of programmer Dmytro Lider, are now worth at least $4 billion each. They each have an estimated 35 percent equity stake in the company they co-founded. (Forbes)

Life’s meditative moments: Given the frenetic pace of life and the ever-present mortal threat of a global pandemic, it should come as no surprise that prayer and meditation apps have become popular, especially among millennials looking for connection and spirituality. Thanks to their wide appeal, Hallow, a Catholic prayer and meditation app with more than 1 million downloads, has raised more than $52 million from venture capitalists. Chief among those apps is Calm, which charges users $70 per year and provides them calming background sounds and short meditations. Other popular apps in the space include Buddhify, Headspace, Simple Habit, Unplug, and Ten Percent Happier. (The Conversation, VeryWell Mind).

Mike Consol (m.consol@irei.com) is editor of Real Assets Adviser. Follow him on Twitter @mikeconsol to read his latest postings.