Investable Universe

A bold new fin-tech disruptor, London-based Fasset, says fractional ownership and tokenization of infrastructure assets like bridges, roads, and energy assets could kickstart sustainable infrastructure growth in developing economies, which will need to invest some $2 trillion per year over the next 15 years just to keep pace with projected GDP growth.

U.S. farmland investment has historically yielded impressive returns and been a reliable portfolio diversifier. But it’s been prohibitively expensive and for all but institutional investors to access. A new venture capital-funded platform, AcreTrader, hopes to change that dynamic, by making farm investment more broadly accessible to investors through fractional ownership. The firm’s founder and CEO, Carter Malloy, talks to Investable Universe about how new funding mechanisms can enhance U.S. farms’ access to capital, and about his journey from Arkansas farm child to long-short equity fund investor, and back to agricultural finance entrepreneurship.

For the past decade, Solidia Technologies, a New Jersey-based, VC-funded cement and concrete technology company, has been hard at work addressing construction’s shoddy environmental record by looking deeper at the industry’s global resource footprint. CEO Tom Schuler speaks with the podcast on why rethinking water and energy consumption is just as critical to the industry's future as are CO2 considerations, as well as the firm's international expansion. 

Joe Madden, CEO of San Francisco-based commodity technology firm XCHG, says metadata about the source and characteristics of commodities like natural gas may be just as valuable--and tradable--to downstream clients and investors as the actual commodities are today. 

Summer 2019 has been a rough go in the always-volatile market for natural gas, with lower price lows and record market shorts.. But we're going long into the weekend with avowed nat-gas bull John Woods, who joins the podcast to explain why he thinks that prices have found a floor.