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The future. It’s the topic on the mind of most business leaders—what’s going to happen in the future? And importantly, how do you ensure you’re prepared for it? Today, as technological advances impact the scale, scope, and utility of data and information, a new ecosystem of information and trust is taking shape around us. Businesses are responding by using and reporting information that goes beyond financial information.

Detailed analyses and quantitative rigor go into every sound investment decision. To make matters more challenging, we are constantly battling our instincts, which can pull us in conflicting directions and get in the way of sound investment discipline.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is here to stay and its provisions change the landscape of the private equity world going forward. The decrease in corporate rates coupled with new net operating loss limitations, corporate alternative minimum tax repeal, and accelerated expenditures will directly impact how the value and price modeling of deals are calculated. When all of the TCJA provisions roll out, deal teams will have many additional tax attribute facets to consider when acquiring or exiting an investment.

Under prior law, the Internal Revenue Code provided that employers would be allowed deductions for operating privately owned aircraft attributable to business flights. Under the new law, though, expenses attributable to entertainment activities will now be 100 percent non-deductible, whereas in the past they were 50 percent deductible. Other changes were made and employers must alter how they categorize flights for the new rules.

While cyber liability losses and privacy claims continue to rise, a new exposure has arisen. Hackers have determined that due to the increased sophistication in computer security, it may be easier to manipulate an individual rather than a machine. With enough policies and procedures in place, Social Engineering Fraud (SEF) is preventable. However, what these professional criminals are counting on is being able to manipulate an employee to violate the company’s policies.

While it may seem like the last box to check, planning for the next generation of owners and managers well in advance usually leads to better operational, financial, and tax outcomes. That remains true whether the transition involves a sale to an outside buyer, passing to the next generation of family, or selling to employees. Busting the four myths of business transition planning, you can see how planning ahead is a component of protecting and strengthening the legacies you’ve built.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will dramatically change how income is taxed for business owners of pass-through entities, such as certain partnerships, limited liability companies, and S corporations. As of January 1, 2018, owners of pass-through entities may deduct up to 20 percent of their “qualified business income” from their taxable income each year. This creates huge incentives for business owners to organize their business as “pass-through” entities. This article breaks down how the pass-through deduction works and what types of businesses may benefit.

Research has shown that demographic trends have important relationships with many economic variables. As a nation’s population ages, the balance of capital tends to shift from debtors to creditors. The supporting data behind the phenomenon and other initial baseline assumptions outlines our capital market return forecasts for approximately 50 asset classes around the world for the next 10 years, and are intended to guide investors in developing their long-term strategic asset allocations.

There are currently more than 1,000 cryptocurrencies with a combined market capitalization of over $400 billion dollars.

While 2018 will have a difficult time living up to 2017’s stellar returns, we believe the markets should still have a more-than-decent showing. Central to this generally optimistic view of the markets is our expectation that the global economy is fairly healthy. Broad-based synchronized growth, which began in 2017, should continue into 2018 and deliver real gross domestic product growth of 2.7% in the U.S. and 3.8% globally. With that growth, financial markets should be positioned to deliver a solid year of returns.