A highlight of 2017 financial markets has been the explosion of interest in cryptocurrencies. The price performance of Bitcoin and its crypto brethren has been nothing short of spectacular. Recently, Bitcoin vaulted 445 percent from its March 25 close of $960 to an intraday high of $5,234 on Oct. 12. During the same span, the market capitalization of the digital currency universe increased more than 600 percent, from $23 billion to $162 billion. By comparison, the coincident performance of gold bullion has been entirely pedestrian, rising some 4.0 percent. Needless to say, these widely divergent performances have fostered speculation that Bitcoin has usurped gold’s role as a “store of value.”

The financial services market is evolving. Client demographics are changing; millennials — primed to inherit an immense sum in liquid assets from their parents’ generation — are quickly gaining investment power and bringing with them vastly different needs and preferences. And with stagnant interest rates and an underperforming IPO market, advisers are suddenly presented with a low-yield investment environment.

Investors have been anticipating the Trump administration’s big push for infrastructure investments in the United States, but their hopes have not been met with action because of the all too familiar Washington gridlock. This has put a lot of government agencies at the state and local levels — as well as the private investment managers hoping to work with them — in a tough spot. They have plenty of projects in need of financing and funding and plenty of design and build firms and investment capital at the ready, but the uncertainty about whether a $1 trillion federal-level infrastructure program will become law has left them waiting to see if they can get a better deal than what is being offered at the moment. If a federal-level infrastructure program might come with grants, loans and subsidies for state and local projects, it makes sense to wait and see.

One could not have faulted Alain Karaoglan for wondering during his early years if he and his family had been dealt a bad karmic hand (assuming he believed in such things). Born in Aleppo, Syria, right about the time the notorious and brutal dictator Hafez al-Assad took control of the country, Karaoglan’s parents fled for Beirut, Lebanon, which was considered the Paris of the Middle East at the time. But brutality followed them when a horrific civil war erupted there in 1975. The Karaoglans were on the move again, this time to France in search of peace and new opportunities.

Recent auction prices have seen collectable cars race into the millions of dollars. The once rare $1 million auction result is now commonplace, and commonly finding its way into the mainstream investment media. As we have researched and taught for more than a decade, collectibles can play a unique role in investing.

Renewable energy became mainstream in 2016. The perceptions that renewable energy is easily outcompeted by conventional fossil fuels, burdened by technological risk and uncertainty, or simply an environmental luxury for the wealthy have been thoroughly debunked. Do not let these myths cloud your judgment, as renewable energy is now a considerable presence within the energy market. This is not a hypothetical or some potential future, but the ground truth reality in today’s market, which many investors and industry experts project will remain the case for the foreseeable future.

Back in 1985, the investment portfolio of Yale University endowment was easy to understand with about 90 percent of the endowment’s assets in a combination of U.S. equities, foreign equities and bonds. In July 2016 (most endowments close out their fiscal year at the end of June), Yale endowments were a grand mix: U.S. equity, about 5 percent; bonds, 8 percent; foreign equity, 10 percent to 15 percent; and everything else in some version of private equity, natural resources, hedge funds and real estate.

Data needs a home. It can live in a small back room of a big office; it can live in servers stacked in cabinets arranged in hundreds of rows in huge warehouses. A data center is a hardware store full of servers, storage devices and network connections. “On a non-weighted percentage, the overwhelming majority of data centers are tiny closets and rooms with a handful of devices,” says Todd Smith, chief technology officer at Transwestern Data Center Solutions. “But on a weighted basis, IT infrastructure has been moving at an accelerated pace to large, third party–managed facilities.”

There is an ancient grain called fonio that had all but disappeared from the diet of Africans. It turns out that fonio had been cultivated for more than 5,000 years and is probably the oldest cultivated cereal in Africa. Once a popular grain on much of the continent, fonio was grown in ancient Egypt, where archaeologists found grains inside pyramids’ burial grounds.

One of the first lessons we learn in school is that two-thirds of the earth’s surface is submerged in ocean water. It is one of the most memorable facts from our primary education. Many of us must have thought what a waste it was that so much of the planet was basically unusable. For the longest time, the oceans were dangerous expanses that we sought to circumnavigate for exploration and, eventually, global trade.

Most advisers look to hire when they are feeling overwhelmed by a stress-filled workload. In reality, however, the best time to add team members lies in the sweet spot between “I’m just about at capacity” and “I want to grow.” Does this describe where you are right now? If so, you should begin thinking about your firm’s most pressing personnel needs. Several positions we’ve seen trending in the past year have involved young, bright professionals taking the lead on technology, paraplanning, client education and marketing. Check out this list of tips for onboarding the next generation.