Posts by Nicholas Hoffman and Company

In the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the financial services industry underwent a comprehensive review, leading to significant regulatory reforms. Among these, the emphasis on fiduciary duty for Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) emerged as a critical differentiator from other financial service providers. Let’s delve into why fiduciary duty is not only essential…

Short term drama tends to distract attention from long term thinking. There is no current shortage of short-term drama when it comes to American daily life. So, we should ask: what long-term issues are being downplayed, or outright ignored, as our attention is grabbed by bizarre and tragic events? Some people might argue that climate…

Last week a significant IT outage rippled through global systems, which ironically was triggered by a defect within a software update made by the global cloud cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The update caused approximately 8.5 million Microsoft 365 cloud devices around the world to malfunction, and fixing the issue has required complex patches that have taken…

In the summer, conversations with friends and acquaintances often lead to the topic of travel plans. With schools on break and the days warmer and longer, many families opt to hit the highways or the tarmac in the summer months. Having just returned from a trip ourselves, our family can attest to the popularity of…

Last Tuesday, Hurricane Beryl made landfall on Grenada’s Carriacou Island in the Caribbean as a Category 5 storm. This event marks the earliest recorded Category 5 hurricane to develop in the Atlantic, signaling a very early start to the hurricane season. The abnormally warm waters of the Atlantic this year facilitated Beryl’s development and have…

Selling a business is a challenging decision. Often, the seller is so committed to their business that they would like to continue to benefit from growth after the sale. There is a solution: an equity rollover. An equity rollover occurs when a business owner sells their company but reinvests a portion of the sale proceeds…

The following “Weekly” has been contributed by a Chinese citizen living in Shanghai. We are keeping the name of the author anonymous. “China is a large country with a long history and many people.” This sentence succinctly summarizes Chinese society. Based on my five years of experience working at a financial regulator in Shanghai, I…

Demographic trends in the industrial parts of the developed world are fascinating to follow. Several factors contribute to a country’s ability to grow and expand its GDP, including the availability of health, housing, education, and leisure resources. Historically, a major contributor to GDP growth has been population growth. But what happens if population growth stops…

Recently a major landlord company in Atlanta was raided by the FBI as part of a nationwide investigation into apartment rent price-fixing. What began in 2022 as a class action suit by renters in several states has now escalated into a national criminal investigation, and is impacting dozens of the largest property owners and managers across…

In the 1987 movie Barfly, Micky Rourke’s character is a soul-searching alcoholic who hangs out in bars pondering life’s mysteries. “Who are you?” a patron asks. “Ah, the eternal question” is Rourke’s response. On the 1976 album “One More from the Road,” Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant reflects on a reporter asking him, “Who…