The world’s largest beef producer joined a chorus of Cassandras this week signaling the end of alternative meats. Meat giant JBS SA killed its Planterra business in the US and shut down a 190,000 square-foot Colorado facility producing plant-based products. Yet the closure was gravely shortsighted. It reflects a crisis of confidence at a time when investors should be ...

  What’s a profit? A recent ill-tempered television appearance by the co-founder of home-flipper Opendoor Technologies Inc., Keith Rabois, showed just how far we have drifted from a common understanding of earnings. Rabois, a Miami venture capitalist, was irritated by his interlocutor’s (not unreasonable) suggestion that Opendoor is loss-making. Net losses total $1.7 billion since inception, according to the latest ...

  Pension funds are supposed to be among the least exciting financial institutions. Their job is to make long-term investments to meet the predictable needs of future retirees. They should be immune to short-term shocks. Yet last week in the UK, they were the center of an incipient financial crisis. What led to this was a novel variation on a ...