oh Please. What a silly excuse. How about they've cut back on investing because they've been bitten twice in the span of one decade by two bubbles (one in housing, one in tech) & they figured out it's better to be more discriminating about capital allocation. simply stated when given a choice between wealth destruction & capital preservation, the latter is more desirable. Has it occurred to you that maybe, just maybe there aren't enough good enterprises to invest into. You're APPLE sitting on 125 Billion $ in cash, would buy Autonomy ?
That kind.
Just to be clear, I'm mostly talking about companies drastically scaling back their plans for growth in recent years, which obviously impacts private investors in the equity markets as well. Countless CEOs have gone on the record saying they've postponed hiring and capital investments because of the current tax and regulatory environment, in addition to the general dysfunction of Washington.
As you point out, Apple is sitting on over 100 billion, and countless other companies are sitting on amounts of capital that were previously unheard of. You can't honestly argue that it's a coincidence that all of these companies are simultaneously gun-shy to invest in growth.
