The challenges of converting old office buildings to residential apartments
by Zain Jaffer After the pandemic that caused many global workers to do their office work from home or remote locations using videoconferencing technologies like Zoom or Google Meet, many office space pundits predicted the death of the office space sector. Admittedly many office buildings around the world, particularly the older non ESG compliant 70s […]
Our major American cities should be paragons of beauty
by Zain Jaffer As a real estate investor, people expect me to love seeing the beauty of cities. Tall aesthetically pleasing skyscrapers that touch the sky as if to symbolize man’s aspirations and achievement. Beautiful parks that recharge families. Great shopping and restaurants to satiate our desires and epicurean passions. In reality everyone should love […]
Is Intel losing its market relevance
by Zain Jaffer Author’s note: I hold some of the stocks mentioned here, mostly in mutual funds. My previous background is in mobile advertising, where my previous startup was acquired by Blackstone in 2019. See https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-closes-acquisition-of-vungle-a-leading-mobile-performance-marketing-platform/ Anyone who has worked in the Information Technology (IT) sector since the 80s has of course heard of Intel […]
What are distributed ledgers?
by Zain Jaffer It has been sixteen years since Satoshi Nakamoto published his Bitcoin white paper [https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper]. Yet most people still do not understand what blockchains and crypto are. I do not blame them. The space is too filled up with geeks and nerds spewing out lots of jargon that befuddle ordinary folks. Instead let […]
The coming AI shock
by Zain Jaffer Unless you have been hiding under a rock, most likely you have heard of or even played around with the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications like Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and other AI applications that have sprouted up. News reports, talk shows, opinion makers now talk about Large Language Models […]
Dangerous debt levels
by Zain Jaffer Recently in early 2024 Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that the US is on “an unsustainable fiscal path.” He said that we are “borrowing from future generations.” Powell suggested that we need a serious adult talk about the way America spends money by creating debt over and above what it collects as […]
Inflation remains sticky
by Zain Jaffer The Fed reported in January 2024 that the previous month’s inflation rate climbed from 3.1% to 3.4%, which brings it farther from the target 2% inflation rate and was higher than forecasted. This is bad news for those who were expecting interest rate cuts in 2024, probably since they think that the […]
The end of the Crypto Genesis era
Sometimes when you have been involved in something for a long time, you tend to notice when something major has changed or happened in that sector. As someone who has been in crypto for quite a while now, perhaps not in the very beginning in 2008, but long enough this year is perhaps the year […]
Why Bitcoin fixed supply matters
Recently an October 2023 US treasury bond auction for 30-year bonds did not do as well as hoped [see https://finance.yahoo.com/news/treasury-bond-auction-runs-weak-034418412.html]. Many traditional buyers are hesitant for several reasons. One is a long-term but remote credit default risk where the US debt is too large for it to pay off. As fewer buyers show interest, the […]
The FTX crashed more than a year ago
by Zain Jaffer It was more than one year ago in early November 2022 that the crypto exchange FTX crashed, losing most of their investors money in the process. The crash was precipitated by a Coindesk report that stated that the exchange balance sheet was propped up mostly by their own FTT trading token. Subsequent […]
The Ten Year Treasury Bond
by Zain Jaffer Many investors carefully track the ten year US treasury bond yields (or rates) for many reasons. The US needs money to fund its expenditures, and if revenues from taxes and other sources is not enough, it needs to borrow money. The way it does that is to sell short term bills and […]
Relying too much on the tech economy
by Zain Jaffer Recent headlines in late August and early September 2023 were about the price of Nvidia stock, the woes of Apple related to China and US market relative to its iPhone 15 launch, and the much awaited Initial Public Offering (IPO) of ARM, the chip design firm that does much of the chip […]