In today’s volatile investment landscape — characterized by higher interest rates, global uncertainties, and persistent inflation concerns — finding stable, long-duration assets feels like searching for an anchor in a storm. Yet the next major investment opportunity may not lie in complex technology ventures but in something fundamentally physical: addressing where America’s massive aging population will actually live.

The number of U.S. public companies peaked around 1996 at more than 8,000 and has since fallen to 4,000 today. That 50 percent decline is attributed to several interconnected factors, including increased regulatory costs, the rise of private capital, merger and acquisition activity, and the high overall expense of initial public offerings, among other reasons. Enter Reg A+, one of several forms of private capital companies can use to raise substantial sums of capital from shareholders, while remaining private and in control of their operations.

Drones have become integrated into everyday life over the past decade, in sectors as diverse as entertainment, healthcare and construction. They have also begun to transform the way people grow food. In a new study published in the journal Science, we show that use of agricultural drones has spread extremely rapidly around the world. In our research as social scientists studying agriculture and rural development, we set out to document where agricultural drones have ...

The financial services industry is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. At the heart of this evolution lies a fundamental question: Should commissioned FINRA-registered representatives be held to a fiduciary standard? As regulatory bodies like the SEC and FINRA continue to refine their oversight, the lines between broker/dealers and investment advisers are blurring. This month’s editorial explores the current regulatory landscape, the implications of commission-based compensation and whether a fee-based future is inevitable.

The U.S. power-generation sector has been punctuated by a deluge of deal flow as of late, as industry players pile in to capture opportunities brought about by soaring electricity demand. Several mergers and acquisitions crossing the $1 billion mark, as well as investments by esteemed infrastructure investors in pipelines, natural gas and other power-generation assets, point to the continued momentum in ...

While gold and the NASDAQ have captured headlines with strong 2024 performance, silver has also played a starring role, surging an unprecedented 75 percent, outpacing everything else in the market. This isn’t just a good run — silver has made history, recently hitting an all-time nominal high of roughly $52.63 per troy ounce in futures and breaking $50 in spot prices.

The future is inherently unpredictable, even in the most predictable of times. But here I am, as I do nearly each year, reading some of the best reports, analyzing consensus numbers, listening to well-known thought leaders and reading the tea leaves in an attempt to predict what will happen in the real assets universe next year — despite these being less than predictable times. In fact, it’s not a stretch to call 2025 the year of uncertainty and chaos. My first prediction, and probably the only one I’d be willing to bet on, is that ...

Advisers are constantly pulled in multiple directions. Between managing client portfolios, responding to market shifts and evaluating new products, their time is in short supply and their attention is highly selective. For alternative investment firms, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. Your message needs to be sharp, timely and easy to engage with. That is exactly where short-form video shines. Short videos consistently outperform longer formats when ...

Watch a rocket blast off and its progress appears slow and onerous, as gravity exerts its relentless pull, seemingly determined to return the object back to Earth’s surface. But as the rocket’s explosive thrust gradually pushes the spacecraft to higher altitudes, gravity’s force is weakened. With time and distance, a remarkable thing is achieved: The rocket begins to truly gain momentum, having achieved something physicists call “escape velocity.” Suddenly, the spaceship that looked barely able to leave the launchpad begins gaining speed and altitude at a furious rate, eventually reaching speeds upward of 17,000 miles per hour in the thinning atmosphere. It’s a concept that Kurt Miscinski, founder and CEO of Cerity Partners, has ...

The student housing sector is facing a striking contradiction in 2025. Properties are achieving near-record occupancy rates, sometimes beyond capacity, yet national average rent growth has practically flatlined. This puzzling dynamic, outlined in a new report by Yardi Matrix, suggests pushback from students and parents, seemingly defying traditional supply and demand economics.

For decades, going public through a traditional initial public offering (IPO) remained the exclusive domain of large, established companies and institutional investors with deep pockets and extensive professional networks. The massive costs, complex registration requirements and regulatory burden effectively welded shut the doors to public capital markets for thousands of promising smaller businesses, as well as individual investors. This created a persistent funding gap — companies too large for friends-and-family rounds or small crowdfunding campaigns, yet too small to justify the multimillion-dollar expense of a traditional IPO.

For years, state-registered investment advisers (RIAs) have faced a unique challenge: advertising rules that put them at a disadvantage in comparison to their SEC-registered peers. While the SEC modernized its marketing rule in 2020, many states have maintained more restrictive regulations, creating a complex and fragmented landscape for firms that operate in multiple jurisdictions. Now a significant proposal from the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) aims to change that.

What would you learn by having conversations with the world’s wealthiest families? No need to speculate, as J.P. Morgan Private Bank has done just that in a report titled Principal Discussions. Download the report here.

Every 28 hours, another rocket is launched into outer space — a pace that reflects the rapid expansion and growing accessibility of the global space economy. As capital flows shift from government-led missions to private and commercial ventures, the space marketplace has entered a new era of rapid growth and is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2032. What was once a market focused largely on government-funded defense and research has now broadened to include ...

Jaime Magyera, head of the U.S. wealth advisory business at BlackRock: “Today women are controlling 30 percent of the world’s wealth. That will be 50 percent by 2030 and 70 percent by 2070. … When they’re getting ahold of this wealth either through their parents and family or through their spouses, they want to do it differently, they want to be served differently. Seventy percent of women leave their husband’s financial adviser after a divorce or a death within one year, because they oftentimes felt not heard, not part of the conversation, not at the table in making decisions. There’s a lot of misconceptions around women.”

As artificial intelligence drives an insatiable hunger for computing power, data centers are projected to increase their energy demand by 165 percent by 2030. But what if the solution to this growing problem lies not on Earth, but in the cosmos? The concept sounds like science fiction: launching data centers into orbit, where they can take advantage of cooler climes and continuous solar energy, untethered from terrestrial power grids and their accompanying carbon footprints. Yet this vision is ...

When tax time approaches, your clients probably start loading everything into their tax preparation software or send documents to their CPA. But what about items they will likely have a tougher time keeping track of? Here are five tax strategies that are often missed or not reported — and they could be keeping money out of your clients’ pockets.

Real Assets Adviser sat down with PGIM Real Estate executive director and portfolio manager Brandon Short to talk about the current real estate landscape, discuss recent investment opportunities driving demand, and explore why now is an opportune time for advisers to take notice.

In a sponsored report published in the December issue of Real Assets Adviser, Adam Liebman, executive director – investment strategist at Accordant, explains why private real estate has grown to be the third-largest asset class, behind only stocks and bonds, and how a new index-based investment fund makes it easier than ever for private investors to access.