Page 22 – Kanebridge News

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Landslides Swallowed Up Houses in California. Owners Still Have to Pay.

When Nic and Alison Grillo bought their home seven years ago in the Seaview neighbourhood of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., south of Los Angeles, Nic knew that the wider Palos Verdes Peninsula had multiple landslide zones. He grew up there.

But he had never heard of any issues happening in Seaview itself. An adjacent neighbourhood, called Portuguese Bend, is where there had been slides since the 1950s. Nic studied the geologist’s report he received and hired an inspector before closing on their four-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot, 1956 ranch house for $1.195 million. “I felt comfortable buying,” he says.

Then, in the summer of 2023, his neighbourhood started coming apart.

Today, there are foot-long cracks on the outside and inside of his house. Since June, two houses nearby have partially collapsed due to landslides and have been deemed unsafe; others were abandoned by owners spooked by the constant creaking of their houses as they were pulled apart by the ground crumbling beneath them. Power and gas were cut off in September, and some worry the sewage system will be next, which would mandate evacuation.

Nic, 45, estimates that he and Alison, a 42-year-old health clerk at an elementary school, have spent more than $25,000 over the past few months in an attempt to stay in their home. He bought a Tesla power wall and solar panels a few years ago, in case there were occasional power outages, but he never anticipated having to use them indefinitely. Now he’s added a generator, a propane tank, and a tankless water heater. They are using an REI solar camp stove to cook until they get hooked up to propane. They go days without showers.

Alison says they don’t want to leave, since two of their children are still in local schools. However, she says it has been hard not to get overwhelmed by it all. “This isn’t sustainable,” she says.

Nic, who works in medical-device sales, says he can’t afford to buy another house somewhere else because he doesn’t see any chance of selling the one he already owns, even at a discount, given what’s happening around it. His homeowners insurance doesn’t cover damages caused by land movement, which is standard for policies in the U.S.

“It’s scary. We are just taking it one day at a time,” he says.

Life in a Slide Zone

The roads on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which juts into the Pacific Ocean south of Los Angeles, have been cracking for decades. A landslide in 1956 damaged over 100 houses in Portuguese Bend and has been moving ever since. In 1980, farther up in the city of Rolling Hills, a section known as the Flying Triangle started sliding. The movement was at a rate of 5 to 7 feet a year.

Now, triggered in part by periods of exceptionally heavy rainfall over the past two years, the rate of land movement has increased significantly. Some areas had reached a velocity of 7 to 13 inches a week and are currently averaging about 8 inches a week, or about 80 times faster than it was moving, on average, in October 2022, according to Mike Phipps, a geologist whose firm was hired by the City of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Geologists discovered a second slide this summer that is about twice as deep as the other tracked slides. That has been pushing out the slide area to almost double its size, from 380 acres to nearly 700 acres, says Phipps. A major concern is that it will continue to expand farther uphill, he says. Movement in another adjacent city, Rolling Hills, led SoCalGas to shut off gas on Sept. 16 to 37 homes, with a warning that power would follow in coming days.

About 44% of the country is at risk for a landslide, according to a new report by the United States Geological Survey. Homeowners in one of the Palos Verdes Peninsula slide areas, as in any of the areas across the U.S. that have been hit by landslides, such as Washington and western Pennsylvania, find themselves in a unique kind of financial hell. Insurance companies don’t write standard homeowner policies that cover landslide losses and surplus landslide policies aren’t available right now in California, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Mortgage companies expect loans to be paid, even if the underlying asset no longer exists or is damaged with no chance of repair; forbearance and forgiveness decisions are up to the individual bank, and they are loath to grant them.

Although some state legislatures, such as in Pennsylvania, are working to address the lack of financial recourse for slide victims, no measures are currently under way in California. If the area were declared a major disaster by President Biden, it would trigger access to emergency funds for individual homeowners via the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the state of California hasn’t yet requested this declaration, saying the current situation doesn’t meet federal requirements for such action.

As a result, owners who don’t want to declare bankruptcy must still pay their mortgages, property taxes—barring a reassessment, which can sometimes take months—homeowner association and other fees, even if their home, and the land it sat on, no longer exists. For those whose homes are damaged, owners are left with few options except to either walk away or stay put and hope their home doesn’t sustain any further damage. Others believe the landslides will abate at some point in the future and trust that they will be able to sell their home when potential buyers simply forget about the landslide threat.

Wei Yen, 74, a retired finance officer, and his wife, Leesa Yen, 66, a teacher, owned one of eight homes that, in July 2023, slid off a cliff into a canyon in Rolling Hills Estates, in an area that had never had a landslide before. It is completely separate from the Portuguese Bend slide complex. The city has a mixture of townhomes and single-family homes that sell for anywhere from $1 million to $4 million. Five other homes were badly damaged.

The Yens bought their 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom townhome on Peartree Lane in Rolling Hills Estates in 2010 for $765,000. In early July 2023, Leesa noticed a skinny, 7-foot-long crack on the tiled patio outside the front door. A few days later, Wei noticed that the crack had expanded. The next day, one of their neighbors called the fire department over similar cracks. The department advised all the homeowners in the surrounding block to pack up essentials just in case. About six hours later, Wei was given 15 minutes to evacuate by the fire chief. By 9 a.m. the next day, the house, and the land on which it sat, started sliding into the adjacent canyon. “I was lucky to get out of there in time,” says Wei.

Now, a year later, the Yens’ home equity is gone. The property had been worth $1.55 million, according to Zillow , just before the slide. Now it is worthless, according to a letter from the city assessor’s office. They have a small mortgage, which they have no plans to ask the bank to modify because they worry their credit rating will be impacted and because they say they can afford it and feel responsible.

They are renting an apartment and had to buy new furniture and clothing, all of which is eating into their retirement savings. They lost what they estimate is around $500,000 worth of items that were precious to them, including antiques and art Wei collected throughout Asia in the 16 years he lived in Hong Kong. They are worried about looters, since the bottom of the slide is right next to a public trail. The danger of the collapsed structure has kept the Yens and public officials from going in.

“Mentally it’s very challenging,” he says. “I’m talking to a therapist for the first time in my life. I’m decimated by this. I see no way out. We asked for help and everyone said they’d do their best, but it’s been empty promises.”

“I didn’t realise I would have to start worrying again about finances in my 70s, ” he says. He says he might have to find a job.

Over in Seaview, Matt Stelwagen, 44, a supply-chain manager for a hospital, and his family moved out of their home in August. He bought his house in June 2022 for $2.5875 million. It was meant to be his forever home, where he and his wife could raise their son, who was 1 year old at the time. The pool cracked in July 2023. Over the next year, the floors started coming apart and the windows and doors would no longer shut. The floors became so uneven he could feel the house tilt, he says. The creaking noises at night from the moving and cracking were terrifying.

“We got to a point where mentally it was better for our stress levels and our son to get out,” he says. They are still paying the mortgage and taxes on the house, along with the rent on the house where they now live, a financial burden he says is staggering: His housing cost is now more than half his income. He’s paying for it through his salary and from savings. “We are stretched,” he says. “You make it work because you’re a parent and you want to provide a stable home life.”

He plans to get the house reassessed so he doesn’t have to pay such high taxes.

“We are exhausted,” says Stelwagen. He says he’s gone through stages, first feeling scared, then really upset and angry, and most recently putting his head down and trying to figure out what to do. “No one will come in with a cape and save me,” he says.

No One With a Cape

Efforts to stabilise the Portuguese Bend slide complex, moving for decades, stepped up in August 2023, when the city of Rancho Palos Verdes received a $23 million federal grant from FEMA. But the discovery this past summer of the deeper slide has made mitigation much more complicated.  The project is being revised because of emergency work and the discovery of the deeper movement. Whether current attempts to slow the movement will be successful is still uncertain, says the geologist Phipps. The landslide velocity has decelerated since July, but it is still moving a foot a week in some areas. That means within a week of drilling a well to dewater the ground, that well could be damaged by the landslide. “It’s a Herculean task,” he says.

Lacking other financial recourse, dozens of residents affected by the slides in Seaview and Portuguese Bend have individually and jointly filed legal claims, alleging myriad failures that have contributed to the slide activity, including insufficient stormwater sewers and drains. Defendants include the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, the city of Rolling Hills, CalWater, Los Angeles County, and the Rolling Hills Community Association of Rancho Palos Verdes, exposing hundreds of homeowners in Rolling Hills to liability.

Rancho Palos Verdes mayor John Cruikshank says he fully understands why people are frustrated. He thinks Southern California Edison should be more open to alternative energy sources, such as power walls and solar; he’s working to get the state to expand its emergency declaration and to request FEMA funding so that both will also support individual homeowners who have been displaced. But suing the city doesn’t make sense, he says. Of its 15,000 homes, about 400 are in the landslide area. “Everyone’s tax dollars are going to help. Why are we being sued by people who we are trying to help?” he says.

These legal fights could take years to resolve and owners are in need of assistance now. Aside from some small local outreach efforts, not much has been forthcoming. One of the biggest supporters after the 2023 Peartree slide in Rolling Hills Estates was a local high-school student named Christian Yoshino, who lives down the street from where the houses collapsed. He went door to door asking for donations, raising about $5,300 that was distributed to affected homeowners, based on need, by the Rotary Club of Palos Verdes Peninsula for necessities such as medicine, clothing and beds.

A lack of help is the norm in many communities affected by landslides, which have been exacerbated in recent years due to extreme weather events such as heavy rainstorms and fires that destabilise soil. Some states are trying. In Pennsylvania, where a landslide outside Pittsburgh last January forced homeowners to evacuate, a bill to create a new state landslide-insurance program for homeowners is up for consideration by the House of Representatives.

After a landslide in the city of Ketchikan, Alaska, damaged homes and killed one person in August 2024, affected residents were allowed to apply for assistance and temporary housing programs. In Washington state, where a mudslide in 2014 east of Oso destroyed dozens of homes and killed more than two dozen people, the governor successfully got President Obama to declare a major disaster, opening up FEMA aid to homeowners and funding a one-time program to buy back properties in the Oso slide.

A Buying Opportunity?

Until the power was cut in September, homes were still selling in Portuguese Bend and Seaview, says Jason Buck, with Re/Max Estate Properties. A 1,834-square-foot house in Seaview sold for $1.78 million in July, not far off its listing price. A four-bedroom, 1,994-square-foot house in the heart of upper Portuguese Bend sold for $800,000 in May, 22% lower than its listing price. But, Buck says, news of the damage and gas and power cuts have started to affect prices on houses in areas near the slide zone.

Buyers are now backing out of deals. Charlie Raine, a real-estate agent for Coastal Legacy, currently has a listing for a four-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot house in Seaview. It first went on the market in June 2024 for $1.95 million. It is currently listed at $1.45 million. Raine says buyers terminated an agreement in August after they saw news-media images of the house in the same shot as a construction project that made it look like a disaster zone. A second buyer, five days into a 12-day escrow, backed out after the power was cut in September.

During showings, Raine uses a cardboard model he made to demonstrate how lifting a house and inserting steel I-beams can, he says, keep it from damage when the earth moves due to fissures. It is a technique his own parents used on their home in 1986 in the Flying Triangle in Rolling Hills and which other homeowners are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to do now in Portuguese Bend.

The marketing for Raine’s listing now includes a note that warns that the home has been adversely affected by the land movement in Seaview, but assures potential buyers that “there are methods available to retrofit the foundation and isolate the affected portion of the home from the movement.”

Rancho Palos Verdes is currently waiving permit fees for what it calls “temporary solutions” such as placing homes on cargo structures and inserting I-beams. Amy Recenmacher, a professor of civil and environmental engineering practice at the University of Southern California, says even if horizontal beams under the house could stop the house from splitting apart, they wouldn’t stop it from moving in a big slide. Placing a reinforced house atop vertical footings to stop it from moving with the slide is impractical in many cases; to be effective, the footings would have to be set into stationary ground or bedrock below the active slide. The Portuguese Bend slide extends hundreds and hundreds of feet deep.

Alejandro Bustillos, president, AB Structural Design, who drew the plan for Raine, says the design isn’t aimed at big hillside collapses; he says it works when fissures appear under a house causing slow movement because adjustable supports allow the house to “follow the movement without breaking apart.”

The price on a house across the street from Raine’s listing just dropped to $999,000 on Sept. 12 from $1.39 million after an investment group backed out of a contract. The listing, advertised on Zillow as an “enchanting storybook home,” with three bedrooms, 1,800 square feet and a new renovation, now says: “Seller has found replacement home and is ready to move immediately. +Incredible Opportunity + NON CONTINGENT CASH OFFERS ONLY.” The listing also warns that gas and electricity have been disconnected by the city.

In the upper section of Portuguese Bend, an area full of artists and teachers where the damage is particularly bad, residents are thinking long term. Tyson Schilz, 40, an electrical contractor, spent $875,000 in 2014 building a 3,700-square-foot, five-bedroom home in an area called Monks Lots, where landowners won a lawsuit in 2008 to overturn a building moratorium put in place by the city in 1978 over landslide concerns.

In December, Schilz realized his house was ripping in two pieces, so he decided to finish the job, spending several hundred thousand dollars raising it and splitting the roof in two. He cut the utilities and reinstalled them into the two, separated halves, among other measures.

“We’re not crying crocodile tears,” says Schilz. “It was always in the back of my mind that it could slide one day.” He is renting a place in nearby Manhattan Beach for the next year while his son finishes high school. He is hoping that in 10 years or so the land will have settled and everyone will have forgotten what happened, at which time he will either move back or sell. “I’m long landslide,” he says.

Corrections & Amplifications undefined SoCalGas cut gas to 37 homes on Sept. 16. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it had cut gas to 35 homes. (Corrected on Sept. 20)

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Electricity That Costs Nothing—or Even Less? It’s Happening More and More

KERKDRIEL, the Netherlands—For much of the spring and summer, Jeroen van Diesen got paid for using electricity.

Sometimes his neighbours came over to power up too, generating even more cash.

Van Diesen’s situation reflects the strange, new dynamics of electricity that could soon become the norm in many parts of the world: A big increase in wind and solar power has pushed wholesale prices to zero or below for many hours of the year, spurring a sea change in the way people use power—based on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

Most people pay a fixed price for each kilowatt-hour of electricity they consume throughout the day. The price is set by their power company and only changes at infrequent intervals—once a week, a month or even only once a year.

Van Diesen, a software salesman, recently signed up to receive electricity from two providers that charge him the hourly price on the Dutch wholesale power market, rather than a fixed price that resets monthly or annually. When the price of electricity falls low enough, smart meters in his house begin charging his two electric cars.

Wholesale prices swing wildly each hour of the day, and even more so as a larger share of electricity flows from wind and solar installations. Because the generation costs of wind or solar farms are negligible, market prices will be near zero when there is enough renewable power to cover most of a region’s electricity demand.

Electricity market dynamics get weirder when renewable-energy producers don’t have an incentive to stop feeding power into the grid, usually because of government subsidies. Then grids can be flooded with excess power, pushing prices into negative territory.

Van Diesen said he’s made 30 euros, equivalent to around $34, over the past five months charging his car, enough to cover the service fee from his power supplier, a Norwegian company called Tibber.

“I’m charging the car for free,” said van Diesen, who is part of a group of clean-energy enthusiasts in the Netherlands who call themselves green nerds. “To me it’s also like a hobby and a game—how far can I go?”

Doing laundry in the evening? The electricity could be free a few hours later when demand dies down and the wind picks up. Likewise, in regions with lots of solar power, charging an electric vehicle in the morning is usually far more expensive than powering up under the midday sun—or whenever the price is right.

In the U.S., most states don’t currently allow such real-time pricing, but many think that will change. Already, in some of the world’s biggest economies from Western Europe to California, the occurrence of zero and negative wholesale power prices is growing fast.

Negative prices

Wholesale prices across continental Europe have fallen to zero or below in 6% of all hours this year, up sharply from 2.2% in 2023 and just 0.3% in 2022, according to data collected by Entso-E, the group of European transmission system operators. In markets with lots of renewable capacity, this year’s figure was higher: 8% in the Netherlands, 11% in Finland and 12% in Spain. Analysts expect those numbers will grow as more solar panels and wind turbines are installed.

The changes sweeping Europe’s electricity markets, which were accelerated by the energy crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine, show what could happen in the U.S. in a few years when renewable capacity reaches a similar scale. In 2023, 44% of EU electricity was generated by renewables, compared with 21% in the U.S.

In some U.S. markets—sunny California, the wind-swept Great Plains, and Texas—zero and negative prices are already common. The wholesale price in Southern California was negative nearly 20% of all hours this year because of the region’s boom in solar-panel installations. That compares to around 5% last year, according to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

U.S. regulators have been cautious about allowing households and companies to sign up for electricity plans that charge them wholesale prices, fearing consumers could be hit with big bills if prices jump. Texas consumers who signed such contracts were walloped with huge bills in 2021 when a rare winter storm sent prices soaring.

States’ reluctance, however, may now be waning as policymakers increasingly see real-time pricing as a way to lower peak demand, reduce the need for costly infrastructure and integrate more renewables into the grid.

California regulators this year ordered the state’s utilities to expand dynamic price pilot programs that have only been available for a select group of customers.

Your overall power bill still won’t be zero in a clean-energy future. Generation costs comprised around 60% of customer bills on average in the U.S. in 2023. Transmission and distribution costs account for most of the rest—and are expected to grow sharply in the coming decade to reinforce the grid for electric heating, electric transport and data centers.

Negative prices could also be reined in over the next few years as governments from Europe to California pare back renewable-energy subsidies. Governments are particularly focused on trimming subsidies for solar power, which is driving negative prices in a number of markets.

Green nerds

In Europe, energy-hungry manufacturers are shifting their operating strategies to maximise energy consumption when prices are close to zero or negative, while throttling back when prices are high.

Linde, a U.K.-based engineering company, is building a new generation of industrial gas plants that can be quickly ramped up and down depending on the wholesale price of power.

When solar and wind power drive prices down, Linde’s plants fire up and send the output to large tanks. When electricity prices shoot up again, the plants can ramp back down and supply customers out of the gases stored in the tanks.

“The tank functions like a virtual battery,” said Klaus Ohlig, a research and development executive at Linde Engineering.

Trimet, an aluminium producer that is one of Germany’s single-largest power consumers, is overhauling its smelters to vary their power consumption depending on the availability of renewable energy on the grid.

A new European Union law requires dynamic-price power contracts be made available to consumers across the 27-nation bloc. Tibber, a power retailer based in Norway that charges its customers the wholesale hourly price, has signed up more than one million households across the Nordic countries, Germany and the Netherlands.

Edgeir Aksnes, Tibber’s co-founder and chief executive, says he doesn’t expect customers to constantly track the hourly price before deciding when to charge their car or run appliances.

“We can automate all of this for you. You don’t have to think about it,” he said.

Some enthusiasts, however, like to get into the weeds.

Wouter van Embden, a 49-year-old Dutch entrepreneur and one of the country’s so-called green nerds, switched to Tibber earlier this year. On a recent summer Sunday, the battery in his home began charging as solar power flooded the Dutch grid and the wholesale power price fell to zero. He also charged his two electric cars and programmed his heat pump to make the water in the house tank extra hot.

Toward the evening, as prices rose with the drop-off in solar, van Embden’s battery—which he and his son built at home—would power his home as well as feed into the Dutch grid.

“I have to be honest, when I started building the battery I had so many outages. There was a lot of testing to do,” he said. “But now it’s working pretty stable.”

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Retail Sales Are the Last Big Economic News Before Fed Rate Decision

Tuesday’s retail sales report could be the scrap of evidence that tips the balance as Federal Reserve officials decide how much to cut interest rates on Wednesday.

It is practically a given that the central bank will reduce rates. Inflation has fallen to its lowest point since February 2021, giving the Fed more flexibility to focus on the second component of its dual mandate—achieving maximum employment. Although the labor market remains resilient, the most recent two jobs reports have been weaker than expected, putting some pressure on the Fed to loosen monetary policy.

The question now is by how much rates will fall—0.5 percentage point, or 0.25 point? The indications from interest-rate futures are split , recently favoring the more aggressive half-percentage-point decrease.

Andrew Hollenhorst, an economist at Citi , leans toward the likelihood the Fed is more cautious on Wednesday, cutting rates by 0.25 percentage points. But he notes that it it is a close call that depends on the dynamics of the bank’s rate-setting committee and the strength or weakness of Tuesday’s retail sales report.

A positive surprise would suggest that both consumers and the labor market remain resilient, paving the way for a more modest cut. If the report comes in well below expectations, however, Fed officials may grow concerned that a weaker labor market is weighing on consumer spending, which could lead to a bigger cut, Hollenhorst added.

Louis Navellier, founder and chief investment officer of the money-management firm Navellier agrees. “In theory, if the August retail sales report is horrible, then a 0.5% Fed key interest rate cut may be forthcoming on Wednesday,” he said.

Economists are expecting retail sales will decline by 0.2% in August from July, according to FactSet. They jumped by a surprising 1% in July .

Lower gasoline prices and car sales will likely drag the headline number lower. Indeed, stripping out car and gas sales, retail sales are projected to increase by about 0.3% month over month.

Yet there is growing concern that even excluding autos and gas sales, the sales figure will be soft. While spending was remarkably strong in July, the Fed’s latest Beige Book flagged that consumer spending ticked down in August, points out Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank . Many retailers, particularly those catering to lower-income shoppers, have warned that Americans are being cautious and exceedingly choosy about what they are buying and where.

The impact of the retail sales report will likely extend beyond the immediate rate cut. The insights it contains about U.S. consumers will also factor into the Fed’s quarterly update to its Summary of Economic Projections, containing officials’ latest forecasts for the U.S. economy, inflation, and near-term interest rates.

The so-called dot plot , which charts the individual interest-rate projections of the seven members of the Fed’s board of governors and the 12 regional Fed presidents, is always closely watched as investors try to chart the Fed’s future actions.

Hollenhorst believes the median dot showing where rates will be at the end of 2024 should show “at least” 0.75 percentage-point of cuts, factoring in 0.25 point at each meeting through the end of the year. But it is likely that officials will leave the door open for more cuts in case data on the job market or consumer spending sour faster than expected.

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Michael Jordan Scores a Buyer for His Chicago Megamansion After More Than a Decade

Michael Jordan has found a buyer for his Chicago estate after more than 12 years.

The 7-acre compound, custom built for the basketball legend in the ’90s in the area’s Highland Park suburb, first hit the market in 2012 asking $29 million. By 2015, the price on the nine-bedroom home was reduced to $14.855 million—the digits of which add up to 23, Jordan’s jersey number—and it’s remained at that price ever since.

Spanning over 32,000 square feet on Point Lane, the home reflects the larger-than-lifeness of its owner, with 19 bathrooms, five fireplaces, a regulation-sized basketball court, a massive weight room where Jordan used to train, and a built-in aquarium, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The sale was first reported by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Outside the home, there is a tennis court, a putting green and a circular infinity pool with its own island, accessible by a small bridge. There are plenty of circular touches throughout, including a round skylight above a circular eat-in kitchen, an arched wine cellar and a circular sitting room with views directly onto the basketball court.

A large lounge area that was once an indoor pool includes glass sliding walls on either side that can open up completely during Chicago’s milder months.

Other unique features include doors from the original Playboy Mansion, a three-bedroom guesthouse and the number 23 emblazoned on the front gate.

Compass agent Katherine Malkin, who is marketing the property, confirmed the pending sale to The Athletic. Malkin did not respond to a request for comment, and the buyer and price were not immediately available. Jordan could not immediately be reached for comment.

It’s unlikely to exceed the asking price. A year after the home first hit the market in 2012, Jordan decided to sell via auction, but the home failed to even meet the reserve bid of $13 million. Despite the lack of movement, Jordan has not dropped the asking price any further since 2015.

Homes in Highland Park, a wealthy suburb of Chicago can fetch upward of $5 million, but Jordan’s home has been the priciest option on the market for a long time. Fellow Chicago Bulls legend Scottie Pippen sold a nearby home in 2023 after a five-year wait. That home, which Pippen bought for $2.6 million in 2004, sold for $1.7 million two decades later, according to Realtor.com.

It seems that despite the home court advantage, this is one game that Jordan has not been able to win.

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China’s Troubles Are Hitting Home for U.S. Companies

For years, global companies showcased their Chinese operations as a source of robust growth. A burgeoning middle class, a stream of people moving to cities, and the creation of new services to cater to them—along with the promise of the further opening of the world’s second-largest economy—drew companies eager to tap into the action.

Then Covid hit, isolating China from much of the world. Chinese leader Xi Jinping tightened control of the economy, and U.S.-China relations hit a nadir. After decades of rapid growth, China’s economy is stuck in a rut, with increasing concerns about what will drive the next phase of its growth.

Though Chinese officials have acknowledged the sputtering economy, they have been reluctant to take more than incremental steps to reverse the trend. Making matters worse, government crackdowns on internet companies and measures to burst the country’s property bubble left households and businesses scarred.

Lowered Expectations

Now, multinational companies are taking a hard look at their Chinese operations and tempering their outlooks. Marriott International narrowed its global revenue per available room growth rate to 3% to 4%, citing continued weakness in China and expectations that demand could weaken further in the third quarter. Paris-based Kering , home to brands Gucci and Saint Laurent, posted a 22% decline in sales in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, in the first half amid weaker demand in Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Macau.

Pricing pressure and deflation were common themes in quarterly results. Starbucks , which helped build a coffee culture in China over the past 25 years, described it as one of its most notable international challenges as it posted a 14% decline in sales from that business. As Chinese consumers reconsidered whether to spend money on Starbucks lattes, competitors such as Luckin Coffee increased pressure on the Seattle company. Starbucks executives said in their quarterly earnings call that “unprecedented store expansion” by rivals and a price war hurt profits and caused “significant disruptions” to the operating environment.

Executive anxiety extends beyond consumer companies. Elevator maker Otis Worldwide saw new-equipment orders in China fall by double digits in the second quarter, forcing it to cut its outlook for growth out of Asia. CEO Judy Marks told analysts on a quarterly earnings call that prices in China were down roughly 10% year over year, and she doesn’t see the pricing pressure abating. The company is turning to productivity improvements and cost cutting to blunt the hit.

Add in the uncertainty created by deteriorating U.S.-China relations, and many investors are steering clear. The iShares MSCI China exchange-traded fund has lost half its value since March 2021. Recovery attempts have been short-lived. undefined undefined And now some of those concerns are creeping into the U.S. market. “A decade ago China exposure [for a global company] was a way to add revenue growth to our portfolio,” says Margaret Vitrano, co-manager of large-cap growth strategies at ClearBridge Investments in New York. Today, she notes, “we now want to manage the risk of the China exposure.”

Vitrano expects improvement in 2025, but cautions it will be slow. Uncertainty over who will win the U.S. presidential election and the prospect of higher tariffs pose additional risks for global companies.

Behind the Malaise

For now, China is inching along at roughly 5% economic growth—down from a peak of 14% in 2007 and an average of about 8% in the 10 years before the pandemic. Chinese consumers hit by job losses and continued declines in property values are rethinking spending habits. Businesses worried about policy uncertainty are reluctant to invest and hire.

The trouble goes beyond frugal consumers. Xi is changing the economy’s growth model, relying less on the infrastructure and real estate market that fueled earlier growth. That means investing aggressively in manufacturing and exports as China looks to become more self-reliant and guard against geopolitical tensions.

The shift is hurting western multinationals, with deflationary forces amid burgeoning production capacity. “We have seen the investment community mark down expectations for these companies because they will have to change tack with lower-cost products and services,” says Joseph Quinlan, head of market strategy for the chief investment office at Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank.

Another challenge for multinationals outside of China is stiffened competition as Chinese companies innovate and expand—often with the backing of the government. Local rivals are upping the ante across sectors by building on their knowledge of local consumer preferences and the ability to produce higher-quality products.

Some global multinationals are having a hard time keeping up with homegrown innovation. Auto makers including General Motors have seen sales tumble and struggled to turn profitable as Chinese car shoppers increasingly opt for electric vehicles from BYD or NIO that are similar in price to internal-combustion-engine cars from foreign auto makers.

“China’s electric-vehicle makers have by leaps and bounds surpassed the capabilities of foreign brands who have a tie to the profit pool of internal combustible engines that they don’t want to disrupt,” says Christine Phillpotts, a fund manager for Ariel Investments’ emerging markets strategies.

Chinese companies are often faster than global rivals to market with new products or tweaks. “The cycle can be half of what it is for a global multinational with subsidiaries that need to check with headquarters, do an analysis, and then refresh,” Phillpotts says.

For many companies and investors, next year remains a question mark. Ashland CEO Guillermo Novo said in an August call with analysts that the chemical company was seeing a “big change” in China, with activity slowing and competition on pricing becoming more aggressive. The company, he said, was still trying to grasp the repercussions as it has created uncertainty in its 2025 outlook.

Sticking Around

Few companies are giving up. Executives at big global consumer and retail companies show no signs of reducing investment, with most still describing China as a long-term growth market, says Dana Telsey, CEO of Telsey Advisory Group.

Starbucks executives described the long-term opportunity as “significant,” with higher growth and margin opportunities in the future as China’s population continues to move from rural to suburban areas. But they also noted that their approach is evolving and they are in the early stages of exploring strategic partnerships.

Walmart sold its stake in August in Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com for $3.6 billion after an eight-year noncompete agreement expired. Analysts expect it to pump the money into its own Sam’s Club and Walmart China operation, which have benefited from the trend toward trading down in China.

“The story isn’t over for the global companies,” Phillpotts says. “It just means the effort and investment will be greater to compete.”

Corrections & Amplifications

Joseph Quinlan is head of market strategy for the chief investment office at Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank. An earlier version of this article incorrectly used his old title.

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Boeing Stock Got Hammered. Why This Analyst Downgrade Terrified Investors.

Boeing stock has fallen to its lowest level since 2022 after a downgrade from a Wall Street analyst put a number on one of investors’ worst fears: stock dilution.

Wells Fargo analyst Matthew Akers on Tuesday downgraded Boeing stock to the equivalent of Sell from Hold. His price target was reduced to $119 a share from $185.

That is the lowest target price on Wall Street by almost $70 a share, according to FactSet. At $119 a share, down about 30% from recent levels, Boeing would have a market value of roughly $73 billion, levels not seen since early 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Boeing stock closed down 7.3% at $161.02, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were off 2.1% and 1.5%, respectively. It was the lowest close since Nov. 4, 2022, when it finished at $160.01, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

“We think Boeing had a generational free cash flow opportunity this decade, driven by ramping production on mature aircraft and low investment need,” wrote Akers. “But after extensive delays and added cost, we now see growing production cash flow running into a undefined new aircraft investment cycle, capping free cash flow a few years out.”

At this point in its product cycle, Boeing simply should be generating north of $10 billion in free cash flow a year. However, production and quality problems have pushed output lower and added costs. Wall Street sees Boeing using almost $8 billion in cash to fund operations in 2024.

What is more, Boeing likely will need to design a new single-aisle jet in the coming years to better compete with the Airbus A321 family of aircraft. That will take tens of billions of dollars spread out over several years.

Akers sees $30 billion in equity being raised by 2026 to help cover the cost of new investment. Some of that hefty total will go toward repairing Boeing’s balance sheet. The company ended the second quarter with more than $53 billion in long-term debt, up from less than $11 billion at the end of 2018, before the pandemic and significant problems with Boeing’s 737 MAX jet.

Raising $30 billion of equity at recent prices would require issuing roughly 190 million new shares, increasing the share count by about 31%. All things being equal, a higher share count reduces earnings per share.

“If Boeing were to postpone new plane development for several more years (launch early next decade) and instead just pay down debt, we estimate free cash flow per share could grow to about ~$20 late this decade,” added Akers. That might justify a $150 share price in coming years, but postponing a new plane would mean “ ceding significant narrowbody share” to Airbus.

Narrowbody is industry jargon for single-aisle aircraft such as the 737 MAX or A320.

Raising equity and offering customers a new plane, or not offering a new jet and holding off on raising equity: Boeing doesn’t have easy choices to make in coming years.

Overall, 60% of analysts covering Boeing stock rate shares at Buy, according to FactSet. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%. Even though Boeing’s Buy-rating ratio is above average, it has been sliding. Coming into the year, before an emergency- door plug blew out in midair on an Alaska Air flight on Jan. 5, the ratio was north of 75%.

The average analyst price target for Boeing shares is about $214.

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How to Lose Money on the World’s Most Popular Investment Theme

There are lots of embarrassing ways to lose money, but it is particularly galling to lose when you correctly identify the theme that will dominate the market and manage to buy into it at a good moment.

Pity the investors in the three artificial-intelligence-themed exchange-traded funds that managed to lose money this year. Every other AI-flavored ETF I can find has trailed both the S&P 500 and MSCI World. That is before the AI theme itself was seriously questioned last week, when investor doubts about the price of leading AI stocks Nvidia and Super Micro Computer became obvious.

The AI fund disaster should be a cautionary tale for buyers of thematic ETFs, which now cover virtually anything you can think of, including Californian carbon permits (down 15% this year), Chinese cloud computing (down 21%) and pet care (up 10%). Put simply: You probably won’t get what you want, you’ll likely buy at the wrong time and it will be hard to hold for the long term.

Ironically enough, Nvidia’s success has made it harder for some of the AI funds to beat the wider market. Part of the point of using a fund is to diversify, so many funds weight their holdings equally or cap the maximum size of any one stock. With Nvidia making up more than 6% of the S&P 500, that led some AI funds to have less exposure to the biggest AI stock than you would get in a broad index fund.

This problem hit the three losers of the year. First Trust’s $457 million AI-and-robotics fund has only 0.8% in Nvidia, a bit over half what it holds in cybersecurity firm BlackBerry .

WisdomTree ’s $213 million AI-and-innovation fund holds the same amount of each stock, giving it only 3% in Nvidia.

BlackRock ’s $610 million iShares Future AI & Tech fund was also equal weighted until three weeks ago, when it altered its purpose from being a robotics-and-AI fund, changed ticker and switched to a market-value-based index that gives it a larger exposure to Nvidia.

The result has been a 20-percentage-point gap between the best and worst AI ETFs this year. There is a more than 60-point gap since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 lit a rocket under AI stocks—although the ETFs are at least all up since then.

The market has penalized being equal weighted recently, instead rewarding big holdings in the largest stocks.

Jay Jacobs , U.S. head of thematic and active ETFs at BlackRock, says it is best to be market-value weighted when a theme has winner-takes-all characteristics, which he says generative AI has. When the firm’s AI fund included robotics it was spread across a lot more stocks that didn’t compete with each other, so equal weighted made more sense.

For investors, it isn’t so simple. Global X takes the opposite approach with its two $2 billion-plus AI funds, AIQ and BOTZ. BOTZ only buys stocks that focus on AI and robotics, but takes larger positions. AIQ spreads its bets on AI and tech more widely, and its 3% cap on its biggest holdings each time it rebalances means it has far less in Nvidia than BOTZ, with a cap of 8%. AIQ still managed to beat BOTZ this year, though.

So far, so confusing. The basic lesson: Picking among funds within a theme is hard, and depends on luck as well as close reading of the fund’s documents. A more advanced lesson is that it is hard to pick a theme in the first place, or to stick with it. The three problems:

1. Defining the theme is hard . Nvidia features in the anti-woke YALL ETF, which pitches itself as for “God-fearing, flag-waving conservatives.” The chip maker is also held by vegan, gender-diverse and climate-action ETFs. Its shares are clearly driven by the prospects for AI, but it is still big in computer-game and bitcoin ETFs, where its chips were originally used.

2. Timing the theme is even harder. Get in too early, and there aren’t any companies to buy. Get in when the funds are being launched, and the chances are the theme is already widely known and overpriced, as there are typically large numbers of launches during bubbles and late-stage bull markets.

“They are trendy by design,” says Kenneth Lamont, a senior researcher at Morningstar. “They play to our worst instincts, because we’re narrative-driven creatures.”

A recent example was the race to launch clean-energy and early-stage-tech ETFs during the bubble of late 2020 and early 2021. Performance since then has been miserable as prices corrected, with many of the ETFs halving or worse.

Dire timing is common across themes: According to a paper last year by Prof. Itzhak Ben-David of Ohio State University and three fellow academics, what they call “specialized” ETFs lose 6% a year on average over their first five years due to poor launch timing.

3. Long-term investing is pitched by fund managers as the goal for thematic investing, to hang on until the theme bears fruit. But even investors who really want to commit to a theme for the long run often find it hard, as so many funds are wound up, merged or change strategy when they go out of fashion.

The boom in internet funds of the late 1990s vanished after the dot-com bubble burst, with few surviving to see the internet theme blossom a decade later, while six of the 50 “metaverse” funds launched after Facebook switched to Meta Platforms in 2021 have already shut, according to Lamont.

The oldest thematic fund, the DWS Science and Technology mutual fund, started as the Television Fund in 1948 before adding electronics, and has gone through at least four other names. I only have data back to 1973, but it has lagged far behind the wider market since then, despite golden ages for television, electronics, science and now tech. (Yes, it has a lot of Nvidia.)

So what to do? At a very minimum, don’t buy based on the name of a fund. Look at the holdings, look at the index it follows and how it is structured, and consider whether it does what it says. Then think about just how expensive the idea has already become. Watch for the theme coming into fashion and getting overpriced, as that is a good time to sell (or to launch a fund).

But mostly, look at the fees: They will be many times higher than a broad market index fund, and the dismal history of poor timing suggests that for most people they aren’t worth paying.

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More Than 40% of World’s Electricity Came From Zero-Carbon Sources in 2023

Zero-carbon technologies comprised more than 40% of global electricity generation for the first time in 2023, according to a report released Tuesday from BloombergNEF.

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar made up 17% of total electricity generation, and hydroelectric and nuclear power contributed 24%. Fossil fuels including coal and natural gas produced 57% of global electricity last year.

“We’ve consistently seen the penetration of renewables rising every year, and this year we hit quite a few milestones that had felt harder to reach in past years,” said Meredith Annex, head of clean power at BNEF.

One such milestone: Solar and wind represented more than 90% of global energy capacity additions last year, a step up from 2022. Global wind capacity also crossed the one-terawatt threshold. And Brazil, the country with the cleanest power mix of the G-20 economies, hit 88% renewable power generation in 2023.

“It just shows the momentum that the space is having. A lot of that does tie into the investment story, where you’ve got rising—skyrocketing, honestly—investment into solar,” Annex said.

Mainland China accounted for almost a third of total renewable energy output last year. The country recently reached its 2030 target for wind and solar energy six years early, according to a statement from its National Energy Administration, and it has pulled back on permits for new coal-fired power plants. The country’s rapid deployment of renewables has some analysts wondering if it will reach peak fossil fuel consumption this year. Declining emissions in China would signal a turning point because it is the world’s largest polluter, comprising nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

Despite rapid growth in renewables, countries’ current commitments aren’t sufficient to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to the IEA. Advanced economies would need to slash emissions by 80% by 2035 to meet the goal.

At last December’s COP28, a global climate conference hosted by the United Nations, participating countries agreed to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. BNEF has forecast that achieving this goal would require investments in renewables to increase to 1.6 times 2023 levels from 2024 to 2030.

So far, that increase hasn’t materialised. Global investments in renewables are roughly on par with 2023 levels, at $313 billion in the first half of 2024, according to the new BNEF analysis. “We’re expecting steady growth, but steady growth does not get you to net zero,” Annex said.

The topline numbers obscure bigger changes under the surface. Average spending in the U.S. is up by about 63% compared with levels before the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which offers generous subsidies and tax breaks to promote decarbonisation. And while Chinese investment is actually down 4% from the same period in 2023, Annex said the dip is due to cheaper equipment for wind and solar, not a decline in demand.

The second half of this year will be a “defining moment,” for the investment landscape, Annex said. Steady growth “is definitely a positive, and it could be a sign that the industry as a whole is reaching a new kind of status quo, but we need to help expand even faster if we’re going to be in line with net zero.”

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Bosses Are Finding Ways to Pay Workers Less

Bosses are quietly trying to reset worker pay levels, saying the era of overpaying for talent is over.

Pay for many white-collar recruits shrank last year , and now wages for new hires in construction, manufacturing, food and other blue-collar sectors appear to be ebbing too, according to an analysis of millions of jobs posted on ZipRecruiter.com .

Job seekers report seeing roles that once offered salaries between $175,000 and $200,000 a year ago now being advertised for tens of thousands of dollars less, a change that has had them rethinking their pay expectations. Companies are also moving job openings to lower-cost cities or offering them as lower-paying contractor roles, recruiters and corporate advisers say.

The push to reset employee salaries reflects a power shift in the cooling hiring market. Employers have more choice of who they can hire, and at what pay level, and are questioning whether they really need star hires when a workhorse will do . Even hourly jobs that were until recently the toughest for employers to fill are being advertised at lower pay than a year ago, as are some professional roles, according to business leaders and recruiters. undefined undefined “A lot of companies are thinking they can get away with paying a cheaper salary because they know us job seekers are desperate,” said Eric Joondeph, 31 years old, who has been looking for a senior customer-experience role for nine months. He has lowered his pay expectations by at least $20,000 a year since he started looking.

Among listings for more than 20,000 different job titles on ZipRecruiter.com this year, sectors including retail, agriculture, transportation and warehousing, manufacturing, and food all registered drops in average posted pay. The biggest was retail, where average wages advertised for new hires is down 55.9%; agriculture is down 24.5% and manufacturing, down 17.3%.

Tom Locke, a McDonald’s franchisee who owns 56 restaurants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, starts hourly workers at $13 an hour, but the signing bonuses and other hiring incentives he offered during the pandemic are gone. He said he is constantly asking his managers if they can reduce hourly wages to $12 an hour.

Labor expenses at Locke’s McDonald’s locations now exceed his food costs—something he said hasn’t happened in his 24 years with the company.

“I want everybody to do well in America, but there’s cost pressures,” he said. “It’s just a constant battle.”

‘Geographic arbitrage is real’

Pay resets continue to ripple through the white-collar world too. Joondeph has been looking for a senior role in customer experience since he was laid off from a customer-experience associate role.

“I’ve seen salaries slowly dropping little by little for roles I’ve been targeting,” he said.

Based in Boise, Idaho, Joondeph said he is struck by the number of jobs he has applied for that now advertise salaries not much higher than $60,000. Many used to advertise with a range between $80,000 and $100,000 in the past six to nine months, he added.

In some cases, companies are looking to attract less experienced, but still coachable, people who can be paid less than industry veterans, corporate advisers say.

Brooke Weddle, a senior partner at McKinsey & Co., said one client recently decided to stop recruiting stars, putting in place a “no more unicorns” hiring strategy, in part, to lower costs. (Unicorns are top performers with specialised skills who can command outsize salaries.)

Other businesses are considering moving jobs overseas, said Weddle, a leader in McKinsey’s group that advises on personnel issues. Instead of hiring data analysts in the U.S., for example, companies want to add people in Mexico and cheaper parts of Europe, like Poland, to save on labor costs.

“Geographic arbitrage is real,” she said.

In the U.S., some Fortune 1000 companies are moving enterprise software jobs from expensive cities such as Chicago and San Francisco to places with a lower cost of living, such as Cincinnati and St. Louis, Mo., said Keith Sims, president of Integrity Resource Management, a recruiting firm based in the Indianapolis area.

Sims, who for 25 years has helped companies recruit professionals who work with software systems like SAP and Oracle , said he hasn’t seen bosses so intent on reining in pay since the recession of 2009.

Salaries for tech jobs working with back-office and core operations business software that paid between $110,000 and $130,000 a year ago now go to less experienced hires for $85,000 to $100,000, he said. Some companies are laying off entire service areas, renaming the division and populating it with new hires at much lower compensation levels.

Hiring managers gain leverage

Overall pay for new hires in white-collar sectors increased this year, after falling in 2023, buoyed by gains in certain corners of the professional world, including law, engineering and healthcare, according to Julia Pollak , ZipRecruiter’s chief economist.

Although some tech roles that require artificial intelligence skills still offer hefty pay, many other tech jobs are advertised at lower salaries than two years ago, according to some Silicon Valley recruiters.

“Most people we interview are seeing lower salaries,” said Jill Hernstat, chief executive of Hernstat & Co., a tech recruiting firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Hiring managers know they are more in control now.”

Other white-collar professions with declining new-hire salaries include finance, down 9.2% in the past year, other professional services, down 2.4% and insurance, down 1.6%, according to Gusto, a payroll and benefits software company with more than 300,000 small and midsize businesses as customers.

Pay adjustments are easing some tensions among colleagues who may have resented how much new hires were making, and the fact that tenured employees’ pay hadn’t kept up, said Tom McMullen , a senior client partner at Korn Ferry , a global organizational consulting firm.

“A lot of leaders wanted this market to cool down because they got themselves into some internal equity messes by paying through the nose for all this hot talent,” he said. “What we’re hearing is, ‘Hey, I don’t have to offer the exorbitant in-hire rates that I was offering.’”

Same work, less pay

Kate Ball was at Amazon .com for eight years, some of them as a senior recruiter, before being laid off in 2023. External recruiters have since repeatedly called her about a contract role there as a senior recruiter. Ball said the job is virtually the same as the one she had once held, but for up to 65% less pay.

Some of her former co-workers who were also laid off have taken lower-paid contract positions with Amazon: “I don’t know anyone that came back on the same package,” said Ball, 44, who has started her own HR advisory practice, Sparkle & Sass Consulting.

As Ball has applied for roles elsewhere, she has noticed some openings get reposted with lower pay ranges than were advertised weeks or months before. She applied for one job, as an employee-experience manager, went through two interview rounds, then heard nothing. A few weeks later, she saw the same job re-advertised, this time at roughly a third less than the six-figure salary she’d been quoted by the recruiter.

It is understandable, Ball said, that companies are reining in pay when they have a greater pick of job candidates than they did a couple of years ago. Still, some tactics could create ill will for employers when they have to compete more intensely for talent again.

“People will take a job now because it pays them and they’re scared, but that’s not going to last forever,” she said.

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Number of Crypto Millionaires Doubled to 172,300 Over the Last Year, Study Finds

The number of crypto millionaires has doubled in the last year, as key regulatory approvals and a new Bitcoin high led to a rapid increase in crypto adoption and a new “crypto elite,” according to a report by wealth and migration consultancy Henley & Partners.

Crypto adoption increased 31% in the 12 months ending in June, to a total of 560 million users globally, while the total market value of crypto holdings nearly doubled to US$2.3 trillion as of June 30. Bitcoin, which peaked in March at US$73,000, comprised about half of both users and value, with 275 million investors and a US$1.2 trillion total market value, up 103% from the previous year, the report said.

The surge in both price and adoption of cryptocurrencies has minted a new crop of millionaires.

In fact, the number of crypto millionaires just about doubled to 172,300 in the last 12 months, and the number of Bitcoin millionaires more than doubled to 85,400—or roughly half of the overall total.

There are also now 325 crypto centi-millionaires—individuals with crypto holdings of at least US$100 million—up from 181 last year, with Bitcoin investors, once again, comprising about half of the total.

Crypto currencies have also minted 28 billionaires, a list that includes the Winklevoss twins—Brett and Cameron Winklevoss;SecondMarket founder Barry Silbert ; MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor ; and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao , who is currently serving a four-month prison sentence after being found guilty of money laundering by a California court earlier this year, according to MarketWatch.

The increase has largely been driven by regulatory shifts that have allowed for the normalisation of cryptocurrencies, despite the high-profile implosion of key crypto players like FTX and Genesis Global Capital in 2022 and 2023. In particular, the U.S.’s’ approval of spot crypto exchange-traded funds in January (following its approval of crypto futures ETFs) signalled a new era of institutionalisation.

“The long-awaited approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in the USA unleashed a torrent of institutional capital,” Dominic Volek of Henley & Partners said in the report.

The U.S. ranked fourth in Henley & Partners’ analysis of global crypto hubs, which takes into account regulation, infrastructure adoption, technology prowess, and tax-friendliness, among other factors. Singapore leads the list due to its recent implementation of a regulatory framework for crypto assets, as well as its strength in infrastructure, technology, and economic indicators. Hong Kong, which also approved spot crypto ETFs in January, came second, followed by the United Arab Emirates, which scored highest on tax-friendliness.

Competition between global economic hubs is crucial, because the rise of the crypto elite is driving wealth migration patterns, Henley & Partners said.

“As we move forward, the intersection of cryptocurrency and investment migration will undoubtedly play a major role in shaping the future of global wealth and mobility,” Volek said.

Kanebridge MEDIA
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