Jeff Dekko’s favorite breakfast cereal is Wheaties, which would be an inconsequential piece of information except that he is a former executive at General Mills, the breakfast cereal giant. More to the point, Dekko was brand manager for Wheaties and Cheerios — but Wheaties was his favorite. Oddly, it is a cereal he never eats, as is the case with most other Americans who buy Wheaties.

Unaccredited retail investors — individuals who earn less than $200,000 per year and have a net worth of less than $1 million, or a couple that earns less than $300,000 per year with a net worth of less than $1 million — have been significantly marginalized by the financial services industry. The reason: Financial service providers have been increasingly strangled by escalating compliance costs stemming from a seemingly never-ending stream of retail-hostile securities regulations.

Co-working firms, led by WeWork Cos., have grown to meet the changing demands of the modern office and labor markets. Nowhere is it more evident than in gateway cities. In New York City, WeWork alone leases more than 1 percent of the city’s office space across 44 locations, according to Green Street Advisors. While the industry’s share of total office space is still small on a relative basis, its rapid growth is forcing investors to take notice.

The California we know is the breadbasket of the nation, producing more than two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts, including almonds, pistachios, oranges, apricots, nectarines and prunes, and more than a third of its vegetables, including artichokes, broccoli, spinach and carrots. It’s all valued at more than $50 billion a year.

What has caused U.S. multifamily rents to decelerate so sharply over the past 18 to 24 months? The main driver appears to be the extent to which supply growth has put downward pressure on occupancy rates in individual metros.

Five decades ago, South Korea had a per-capita GDP of $158, making it one the world’s poorest countries. That was before the United States, in the aftermath of the Korean War, pumped $60 billion into South Korea over a 30-year period and secured the nation’s physical security with a U.S. military garrison. Then there were trade and other forms of economic cooperation. Today, South Korea has a per-capita GDP of more than $27,000, as it has progressed into a post-industrial economy excelling at consumer electronics, biotechnology and robotics, among other lines of business. It has also moved from dictatorship to stable democracy.

The current market environment has pushed family offices to look beyond the traditional asset classes of bonds and stocks. In the ever-present search for higher total returns with predictable cash flows, family offices have been expanding portfolio allocations toward higher-yielding alternatives and, in particular, real estate. This makes intuitive sense, as even in today’s pricey environment, cap rates are hovering above 6.0 percent, a healthy premium over the current dividend yield of 1.8 percent on the S&P 500. More than 560 family offices are either considering or currently investing in real estate, with a current or planned real estate allocation ranging from $5 million to more than $1 billion.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man. That quote, from former President Ronald Reagan, seems almost quaint today, when the Federal Reserve (among other central banks) struggles to push the inflation rate up to 2 percent. Since 2009, inflation has been subdued globally, making it difficult to conceive of a return of the dreaded monetary hit man. Yet in recent months, some prices and key measures of inflation expectations have sprung to life again.

U.S. university endowments, such as Harvard and Yale, have been leaders in diversified multi-asset-class investing for more than two decades. Through this approach to investing, and with a large exposure to alternative asset classes, they have consistently achieved attractive annual returns with moderate risk. This paper explores whether investors can benefit from applying these investment principles to their own portfolios.

Senate Democrats have announced a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that begins what many hope will be negotiations with Republicans over their own infrastructure proposal, toward the passage of a bill later this year.

As an investable commodity, water remains something of an oddity. Unlike oil, wheat, gold or any number of staples, buyers and sellers cannot execute a “bet” on water through well-understood futures markets, such as the New York Mercantile Exchange. There are no global prices for water.

The market landscape underlying oil and gas–focused investments has been shrouded in optimism recently, which is supported by the following developments: