WSJ on Locavesting

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece yesterday about local stock exchanges and "loca-vesting." The idea of local exchanges—like the ones that used to thrive across the nation before markets consolidated—is gaining ground as a way to support the growth of job-creating regional businesses for whom a Nasdaq or NYSE listing is prohibitively costly. The localized markets would also provide an important source of liquidity for local investors. The examples and concepts in the article will be familiar to early readers of my book, Locavesting, which will be in stores next week(!). But it is good to see mainstream media taking notice of this important trend. Local exchanges, it should be noted, are just one example of the many innovative models being tested across the country to once again allocate capital to the community-rooted businesses that are so vital to our local and national economies. I coined the term "locavesting" to refer to the entire sweep of these efforts, from community finance to crowdfunding to local exchanges.