For investors who want access to the benefits of owning privately held real estate, who find the potential risk-adjusted returns that those investments generate appealing, and who are willing to adopt a buy-and-hold strategy, responsible real estate investment opportunities remain available. Opportunities, however, depend on the property type and expected return on investment. The current real estate environment demands a patient, thoughtful approach to investing and requires investors to thoroughly evaluate the assets they are considering.

Real estate investors understand the necessity for investment diversification, which is why many of them are adding oil and gas to their portfolios. There also has never been a better time to invest, with many experts advising that buying opportunities for oil and gas today through 2018 are better than 2008 opportunities in the real estate market. With more than $1 trillion in large project cancelations, future demand for oil and gas consumption — which grows at a steady rate — is sure to be unmet, raising future prices.

During the early 1990s, a Panamanian pitching phenom broke into the big leagues in none other than New York Yankee pinstripes. The rap against the tall, lean right-hander was that he threw one — and only one — pitch called a “cut fastball,” or “cutter” for short. The baseball pundits sneered. Among them was Keith Olbermann, one of the premier sportscasters and commentators of the era. How, they mused, could anyone possibly build a successful Major League pitching career throwing just one pitch to the greatest batters in the world? Surely batters would decode the repetition of his delivery and turn him into a historical baseball footnote.

Fifteen years ago, the landscape of infrastructure investing was vastly different than it is today. Having been largely government funded in the United States, infrastructure was not on the radar of most investors. That has since changed. As more countries opt to privately fund infrastructure, investors are flocking to the opportunities.

Despite tens of billions of dollars of federal subsidies for rural communications networks, rural broadband connectivity remains a vexing problem. While the numbers show improvement from prior years, the most recent broadband report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found that 39 percent of the rural population (23.4 million Americans), compared with 4 percent of the urban population, lacked access to what the FCC regards as basic fixed broadband service — 25 megabits per second.

It is still early days in the presidency of Donald Trump, but there is no question his administration has brought sweeping change to financial markets already, with potentially “radical” changes ahead for private equity real estate funds and commercial real estate investors.

One of the compensations of aging is living long enough to see history repeat itself. Count Marci Rossell among those who see past a prologue. The former chief economist at CNBC joined ADISA conference attendees in New Orleans to offer her take on current trends in finance. But, like all economists worth their salt, she did a good deal of prognosticating as well. Look to the other side of the world and Rossell sees a second case of Asian influenza gathering a fever pitch, though with roughly 10 times its force this time around.

The U.S. agriculture sector is facing many headwinds at the outset of 2017 — a strengthening of the relative value of the U.S. dollar, falling commodity prices and rising labor costs are squeezing crop budgets. These factors, combined with looming increases in interest rates and the prospect of significant changes being made to U.S. immigration and trade policy, have the potential to materially influence some segments of the nation’s agriculture sector this year and beyond.

Traditionally seen as unexciting and featuring incremental growth, industrial has become arguably the hottest sector in commercial real estate because of changing consumer and lifestyle trends.

WTI oil prices in 2014 averaged about $90 to $100 per barrel (bbl), with Brent oil pricing pushing $110 per bbl. Through all of 2015 and 2016, however, we saw oil fluctuate from $25 to $50 per barrel, with natural gas prices not faring much better. Unfortunately, the desire among many to see oil prices move into the $60 to $70 per bbl range depends on a number of contingencies including: 1) whether OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) will continue to reduce its production target on a stable basis, and 2) whether such production cuts will stabilize oil supplies in light of upstream players in other non-OPEC countries that are itching to drill again.

With much anticipation in oil markets, in January the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) enacted production ceilings for members, with supposed voluntary participation of non-member Russia, the globe’s largest crude exporter.