Investment Perspectives

Americans favor real estate over stocks nearly two to one, even though stocks have the better long-run average return. This piece breaks down why leverage — not raw returns — explains the gap, then shows two realistic scenarios where the same framework produces opposite winners, and a third where the winner flips again depending on how long you hold. Includes what the model deliberately leaves out: taxes, liquidity, and active management effort.

U.S. health care spending hit $5.3 trillion in 2024 — more than any other country, despite the U.S. not even being the world's richest per capita. This piece breaks down the real reasons why (paperwork, physician pay, undernegotiated drug prices), how Germany, Japan, and Singapore keep costs down instead, which U.S. fixes are already underway, and where each of those dynamics creates a distinct opportunity for different types of investors.

Warren Buffett says he could still compound money at 50% a year. The data says the market that let him do that in the 1950s doesn't exist anymore — and here's the specific evidence why.

The medtech ETF beat the pharma ETF over the last decade — not because medtech won, but because two stocks inside it did. Here's what you're actually buying, and why the S&P 500 beat both anyway.

Rare earths aren't actually rare — deposits exist on every continent. What's concentrated is processing, a capability built over decades. Here's how the mining-to-magnets supply chain works, where global diversification efforts stand, and how investors can gain exposure to both the established leader and the emerging alternatives.

Gas prices are elevated because of a war-driven risk premium, not a physical shortage — Iran-linked disruptions and Ukraine's campaign against Russian refineries are both squeezing supply. A permanent decline requires both conflicts to reach a resolution that actually holds, not just a pause, and neither is currently in view.

Four widely held assets — VGT, VOO, VONG, and gold — moved in noticeably different directions over the same two-week window in July 2026, despite facing overlapping macro pressures. The divergence isn't random: it traces directly to how concentrated each fund's exposure is to the forces currently in play, from an AI-chip valuation reset to a shifting Fed rate outlook. This piece breaks down why sector concentration, not headline risk, is driving the split.

The real divide isn't income — it's authority. Labor operates within delegated limits; capital doesn't. Here's why that distinction matters more than your paycheck.

Fourteen years of VOO, VEA, and VXUS data show international funds have never risen in a year the U.S. market fell. The real case for holding them isn't downside protection — it's something else entirely.

A short-duration TIPS fund fell 2.96% in 2022 while the S&P 500 fell 18.11%. Here's what that gap actually tells you — and doesn't — about what TIPS protect against.