ETF Revolution: How Passive Investing Reshaped Global Markets
The $12 Trillion Shift Global ETF assets hit roughly $12 trillion in early 2025, according to ETFGI, up from $1 trillion in 2009 and just $200 billion in 2003. The…
Interest Rates, Inflation and Markets: Making Sense of the Macro Picture
The Rate Cycle That Changed Everything The Federal Reserve’s interest rate hiking cycle of 2022-2023 — 11 rate hikes taking the federal funds rate from 0-0.25% to 5.25-5.5% in 18…
The Magnificent Seven: Can Big Tech’s Market Dominance Continue?
$13 Trillion in Seven Stocks Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA, Meta, and Tesla — the so-called “Magnificent Seven” — have a combined market capitalization of roughly $13 trillion as of…
Bear Market Survival Guide: Lessons from 2000, 2008, 2020 and 2022
The Only Certainty in Markets Bear markets aren’t anomalies — they’re features of the system. Since 1928, the S&P 500 has experienced 27 bear markets (defined as a 20%+ decline…
NFT Market in 2025: From Hype to Utility — What Actually Survived
The Great NFT Cleanse The NFT market of 2021 — where JPEGs of cartoon apes sold for millions and “right-click-save” was a meme that missed the point — feels like…
Central Bank Digital Currencies: Progress Report on 130+ Countries Exploring CBDCs
The Global CBDC Landscape The Atlantic Council’s CBDC Tracker counts 134 countries and currency unions — representing 98% of global GDP — exploring central bank digital currencies as of early…
The State of DeFi in 2025: Total Value Locked, Real Protocols and Persistent Risks
DeFi’s Comeback Decentralized finance took a beating in 2022-2023 — LUNA/UST collapsed, FTX imploded, and DeFi total value locked (TVL) plummeted from $180 billion in December 2021 to below $40…
Ethereum After the Merge: Proof-of-Stake One Year In — Data and Verdict
The Biggest Upgrade in Crypto History Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake — known as “The Merge” — completed on September 15, 2022. It was the blockchain equivalent of replacing…
The Rise of Solo Capitalists and Micro-VCs: The Fragmentation of Early-Stage Investing
Twenty years ago, early-stage startup investing was dominated by a handful of brand-name venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road. Today, the landscape is fragmented across thousands of investors: traditional…
Deep Tech Investing: Why Hardware, Biotech and Climate Tech Are Attracting Billions
For the past decade, venture capital has been dominated by software. Software businesses are capital-efficient, scalable and have high gross margins — typically 70-80% compared with 30-50% for hardware businesses.…