Tag Archives: Investing: Features

It’s not that the sharing economy itself is a new idea. Monasteries loaned books to the public in the Middle Ages, farmers have shared tools and labor for centuries, and the first known car rental service popped up in 1904. What is new is how quickly an extremely varied set of companies built around sharing, renting, collaborating, and accessing items on-demand are growing, thanks in large part to the proliferation of smartphones. There are 44 privately held sharing-oriented businesses that...

With profitability at U.S. corporations touching historic highs, and corporate cash piles as large as they’ve ever been, one of the top tasks of executives these days is simply deciding how best to spend the money. Companies in the S&P 500 had an aggregate cash balance of $1.43 trillion in the second quarter of 2015, which tied a record set in the fourth quarter of 2014.   So what should companies be doing with all that money? In a recent white paper, Credit Suisse Corporate...

Just as a fierce storm can change the shape of a shoreline, liquidity has drained away from the post-crisis financial markets, creating new and unfamiliar sandbars where investors can wind up shipwrecked if they’re not careful. To navigate the newly parched market, Credit Suisse’s Private Banking and Wealth Management division says that investors must not only pay much closer attention to liquidity risks in their portfolios, but also learn to use illiquidity to their advantage.   The...

The third quarter wasn’t kind to U.S. stocks. The S&P 500 fell 6.4 percent, with stocks battered by everything from fears over China’s growth slowdown and financial market collapse to uncertainty about Federal Reserve policy and the Volkswagen emissions scandal. In June, the consensus view on third-quarter earnings was a 1 percent decline. Heading into earnings season, that figure has been revised downward to a 5 percent decrease. With the fourth quarter underway, none of the issues that...

Given that consumer prices have either moved lower or essentially stayed put in the developed world for much of the past year, the word inflation does feel a little strange on the tongue. U.S. consumer prices declined through the 12 months ended in May and have pretty much flatlined since, while Japanese inflation has stayed under 1 percent all year. After falling for four consecutive months, starting in December 2014, European consumer prices have stayed where they are as well. But Credit...

Energy master limited partnerships, most of which are in the business of storing and transporting oil and natural gas, have had a rough time of it since energy prices started falling in mid-2014. The Alerian MLP index has fallen 38 percent since its August 2014 peak and is down 27 percent year to date. The 22 percent loss in the third quarter is the worst quarterly decline since the index’s inception in 1998. In September, the asset class was down 15 percent, though it regained all of that...

For most of 2015, it was difficult to perturb U.S. financial markets. Despite protracted negotiations between Greece and its creditors that almost broke up the European Union and a Chinese stock market crash, equity market volatility remained remarkably subdued for most of the year. But the relative tranquility shattered on August 24, when disappointing manufacturing data out of China sparked a selloff in the Chinese stock market that spread to financial markets all over the world. Volatility...

There’s no question that the current bull market is getting a little long in the tooth. Since 1948, bull markets have lasted an average of five years and the current run has already entered its seventh. There must be a bear lurking around here somewhere, right?   There really had been an unusually long period of calm in the U.S. stock market. Until fears about the Chinese economy sent volatility soaring and triggered a worldwide equities selloff in late August, the S&P 500 hadn’t...

It’s been a big year for mergers and acquisitions. The combined value of worldwide transactions is on track to hit $2.6 trillion in 2015, an increase of almost 25 percent over last year’s $2.1 trillion. All signs point to the deal frenzy continuing, too. So how can a savvy investor take advantage of the increased appetite for deals? By investing with even savvier ones. Credit Suisse’s Private Banking & Wealth Management Division thinks the time is right to invest in hedge funds that...

It should surprise no one that one of the best performing investment strategies over the past 15 years has been to play defense, specifically by buying high-dividend paying stocks in sectors like consumer staples, health care, and utilities. Not only have those stocks proven less volatile than the broader market, they have drawn increasing investor interest as interest rates have remained stubbornly low. But as rates look set to increase at least in some parts of the world, Marc Häfliger,...