Credit Suisse

As the second-quarter earnings season draws to a close in the United States, with 89 percent of companies in the S&P 500 having announced quarterly results, there’s both good and bad news to report. Sugar first: Seventy-four percent of companies beat consensus estimates, slightly better than the 10-year average of 70 percent. The outlook for the future is getting rosier, too. The consensus forecast for 12-month forward earnings growth is now 7.2 percent, up from 5.2 percent at the...

It’s not an easy time to be a fixed-income investor, particularly for those seeking opportunities in the United States. The Federal Reserve’s stated intention to raise benchmark interest rates this year for the first time since 2006 hangs over the U.S. fixed-income market like a pall, threatening to drive bond prices down, introduce volatility, and even create a liquidity crunch. Investors who want (or need) to maintain exposure to fixed income through the rate hike might try looking across...

For the three months leading into August, the Chinese government had kept the yuan-dollar exchange rate fixed in a tight range around 6.115 yuan to the dollar. Yet the yuan’s spot price consistently traded about 1.4 percent weaker than the fix. Investors, in other words, sensed a devaluation coming. In mid-August, Chinese officials proved them right by intervening in currency markets for three days in a row, prompting a 3 percent drop in the value of the yuan.   An 8 percent decline in...

Conventional wisdom says that gold is a ‘safe haven’, an asset to which investors flock when chaos threatens financial markets. Over much of the past century, it has served as a store of value. Those days may be over. Despite several such potential negative events in recent months, investors have wanted nothing to do with the yellow metal.   June and July featured exactly the kind of events that would have driven gold prices higher in the past – the Chinese stock market...

After six disappointing quarters in a row for Google and persistent doubts about when and if Amazon will generate steady profits, many investors have recently started to wonder how long double-digit revenue growth can continue, and whether growth on the bottom line will ever be as impressive as that on the top line, according to Uwe Neumann, a senior technology analyst in Credit Suisse’s Private Banking & Wealth Management Division. In other words, can Internet platform companies such as...