With over $300 billion in cash between the three, these companies have some of the most secure futures in the entire market. As the market risk continues to increase, it would be prudent to add one of these stocks to your portfolio.
It has been an ugly few months for investors. The just closed third quarter saw the biggest equity losses in some four years, and all major indices saw significant damage during the quarter. High beta sectors of the market fared even worse with small caps, emerging markets, and energy and commodity stocks getting battered. Even the biotech sector which has been one of the strongest leaders of the market for more than a year slipped into official bear market territory near the end of September.
In addition, there are starting to be signs of trouble in the high yield credit markets; this trouble is even outside of the debt from commodity and energy concerns who are starting to be in obvious stress. These challenges extend to commodity based countries such as Brazil which saw its sovereign debt downgraded to junk last month and is deep in the throes of stagflation. Something our country has luckily not experienced since the bad old days of the late 70s.
Credit spreads between corporate investment grade as well as non-investment grade debt and 10-year treasuries have widened recently and bears keeping an eye on. Almost every deep decline in the market has been preceded by a credit event including the recent financial crisis, Mexico in 94, the Asian crisis of 97, the Russian default of 98 and of course the Greece scare in 2010 and 2011.
The markets are at an inflection point and it is hard to tell which way they will go for the rest of the year. On the one hand, Q2 GDP growth clocked in at a robust t. However, that level of growth is unlikely to be sustained. Given recent domestic economic readings, I would not be surprised if GDP growth comes in at half those levels when the initial third quarter GDP report comes out late this month.
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