On April 1, real estate prices in rural Xiongxan County, roughly 80 miles south of Beijing, spiked as much as 37 percent; highways jammed as speculators rushed to the obscure district. That morning, the Chinese government had announced that at the direction of President Xi Jinping, 800 miles surrounding Xiongxan would be developed into a city meant to serve ...

  Six months ago, technology investors were complaining privately that bankers were lowballing stock prices when companies went public. Fast-forward to today; no one should be griping about overly conservative IPO prices. Late Thursday, business software company Okta Inc. sold 11 million shares in its initial public offering. The IPO values Okta out of the gate at about 13.6 times ...

  Victims of tech hype should be a bit wary of Elon Musk’s dismissal of hydrogen fuel cells as “fool cells.” A figure as iconic in the tech industry, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, appears to disagree. Amazon has acquired the right to buy 23 percent of Plug Power, a Latham, New York-based company that went public back in 1999, has ...