If you want to get a sense of just how insecure investors are feeling, consider this: investors worldwide are holding more than $50-trillion (about R702-trillion) in cash. That's according to BlackRock president Rob Kapito, who mentioned the startling statistic in an earnings call on Tuesday. He noted that up to 60% of clients' holdings are now sitting in cash, according to BlackRock research. "Depending upon changes in interest rates and changes in equity volatility, a lot of that money can come into motion," he added. BlackRock knows a lot about big sums of money. The New York firm now manages more than $5-trillion, an amount that's bigger than the Japanese economy. But it's hard to comprehend a concept like $50-trillion, even for the world's biggest asset manager. That's almost three times the annual economic output of the US, the world's biggest economy. It's more than twice as much as the balance sheets of all the biggest central banks combined. If even a fraction of this cash ...
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