As it happens, shares are the most profitable asset class for fund managers and for the investment banks that serve them.
The airline industry is recovering from its worst downturn last year, but growth in the more profitable business class segment, where SIA thrives, is slow and could take time to capture pre-crisis level.
As proof, he cites a recent Morgan Stanley report that labeled venture capital as the single most profitable asset class over the period between 1975-1995.
The bond market mystifies me when I consider that it, too, may continue to be a profitable asset class over the balance of the decade something the waterfall theory seems to imply.
To become profitable, Earth Class Mail is shifting its focus from being a consumer retail business to being a platform solution provider for postal services that license the company's mail-sorting technology.
After so much turbulence, airlines are trying to chart a more profitable course through mergers and a renewed focus on business and first class.
Now, though, there is no certainty they will ever re-emerge as profitable world-class institutions.
As a result, second-generation antipsychotics had become one of the fastest-growing and most profitable pharmaceutical classes.
But all of them are moving gingerly, hoping to avoid competing against their established, highly profitable business-class cabins.
The most profitable business-class travellers will be loth to give up either frequent-flyer miles or the convenience of a full timetable.
The drop in numbers was particularly sharp for profitable first-class travellers, as firms cut back on their travel budgets.That short-term problem is interacting fatally with a longer-term determination on the part of the government to get the cost of the railways down.
