Aluminum is the jack-of-all-trades of the metal industry: it’s everywhere, underpinning modern life, from an iPhone to a jetliner to a can of beer. For a long time, however, it was difficult to get excited about it. The metal is just dirt: bauxite, one of the most abundant elements on the Earth’s crust. And the bulls couldn’t count on ...

Life Insurance Corp of India was seeded by the government in New Delhi, but nourishing the sapling to a colossus with 39.6 trillion rupees ($525 billion) in assets under management — and more lives assured than Pakistan’s population — has fallen on generations of loyal customers. Which is why LIC’s upcoming initial public offering, India’s biggest ever share sale, raises ...

  Online brokers like Robinhood Markets Inc and crypto assets might get the headlines, but the Securities and Exchange Commission’s parallel effort to drag private-equity firms and hedge funds out of the shadows will have far more impact on far more lives. Private equity especially has exploded in power and reach in the past decade. That’s why SEC Chair Gary ...