A chart worth discussing
“Auto loan delinquencies are at an all-time high. Credit card delinquencies over 90 days are matching 2010 levels.”
“Did not have tech being more capital intensive than mining in my playbook during our lifetime.”
Other charts worth pointing out
iPhone Index vs. Big Mac index
S&P 500 Index – 2025 performance review by sector
Fund categories – % of top performers that maintained their ranking
Canadian equity funds – underperformance rate & benchmark performance
Diesel processing costs vs. North Sea crude oil
Discretionary spending by generation
Online betting
SEC Preps Plan to Widen Investor Access to Private Markets
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is eyeing a plan to expand access for retail investors to private markets and allow investment advisers to charge performance fees to a wider set of clients.
The regulator’s planned proposal was received by the White House Office of Management and Budget on Monday. It’s the latest sign of the agency attempting to open up an area of the market that’s off limits to most mom-and-pop investors.
“Exposure to the full dynamism of our markets – both public and private – should not be reserved for wealthy insiders,” the SEC said in a statement.
The proposed rule would amend the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the Investment Company Act of 1940 by “modernizing” the performance fee framework and allowing retail exposure to private markets through registered funds, the SEC’s rulemaking notice states. Further details weren’t included in the notice.
Investment advisers are currently limited to charging performance fees to so-called qualified clients, said Thoreau Bartmann, partner at K&L Gates and former attorney in the SEC’s investment management division.
“Through limiting performance fees, you’re limiting access to that asset class,” Bartmann said. “Whether that’s a good or bad thing, that’s debatable.”
Investing in private markets has historically been the domain of institutional investors or wealthy individuals who, in theory, have the knowledge to assess whether an investment is a good idea.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has repeatedly bristled against such restrictions, saying fast-growing companies that are able to attract capital in private markets remain unavailable to most investors. Broadening access to private markets is about “freedom and fairness,” he said at an SEC event in March.
At the same time, investments offered privately provide fewer disclosures than those in the public markets, which can make them harder to value. That exposes investors to more risks, groups like Better Markets have warned.
Once the White House completes its review of the SEC measure, the current three-member commission is expected to release a proposal for the public to the public for comment. The agency will then incorporate that input into a final version of the rule, which must be voted on by the commission again.
This week’s fun finds
On a recent visit to the Toronto office, Catherine brought several cat-themed hot sauces from Québec for her fellow EdgePointers to try. They were bright, full of flavour and had a nice kick to them.
If you dive to the Mindoro more than once, you’ll find that the shipwreck is always changing. The vessel has been resting in the cold, dark waters of the English Channel since the 19th century—but as currents shift, some parts of the site emerge from the sand, while others disappear into it.
Last year, when diver Stefan Panis explored the wreck with a friend, he stumbled upon a sealed bottle, which he decided to bring up to the surface. When he rinsed it off, he could read the words emblazoned on the seal: “Guinness Extra Stout, London.”
The Mindoro was a British sailing barque that sank on November 27, 1864, making this particular bottle of Guinness roughly 162 years old. Panis hadn’t known that the brand’s history stretched back that far. Unsure of what to do with the bottle, he shared his discovery with Pawel Truszynski, a fellow diver and researcher, who started making plans to investigate the beer.
“We immediately recognized that we weren’t just holding an old artifact,” Truszynski tells Smithsonian magazine. “We were holding a flawlessly sealed time capsule of liquid history.”
What would this bottle of Guinness have tasted like in the 19th century, during the reign of Queen Victoria? The two men wanted to find out, and they had a few possible paths forward: They could analyze traces of the yeast and try to recreate it. They could also just pop open the bottle and take a swig.
This particular bottle was found lying on the ocean floor, but Panis noticed others nearby that were still secured in wooden crates. Now, he and Truszynski need to determine how well the beer has been preserved at the wreck site, located roughly three miles off the coast of Dover.
“They were packed upside down, which under deep-sea pressure created a perfect natural hydraulic block, keeping the seawater out,” Truszynski says. If experts can determine that no seawater penetrated the bottle, bringing harmful bacteria with it, then the beer might be safe to drink.
The men sent samples from the bottle to KU Leuven, a university in Belgium, where microbiologist Kevin Verstrepen plans to analyze them in his lab. If the Guinness gets the green light, Truszynski will be one of the first in line to try it. “To taste a flavor profile that has been trapped in a vacuum since the Victorian era would be an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he says.
Panis, meanwhile, tells BBC News’ Adam Mandeville that he’s normally “not that big” of a Guinness fan. But if the testing determines that the beer is safe to drink, he will “of course” have to sample it for himself.
