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Some recent contributions to economic literature have highlighted the role of corporate savings decisions by big corporations in devoting their profits to direct investment in capital goods, showing how this role is affected by the features of corporate governance and the forms of competition, but also by the possibilities of holding liquid financial assets bearing high returns. However, some of these analyses, while by and large plausible at the firm level, show a fallacy of composition when transposed to the macroeconomic level to explain the effects of financialisation on real aggregate investment.

Starting from a critical analysis of both mainstream and heterodox contributions on this topic, the paper proposes an analytical framework in which  the growing financialisation of big corporations, interacting with financial globalization, which creates new ways to access the high profits produced in the emerging markets, and growing liquidity holdings, closely connected to both growing uncertainty on very competitive worldwide markets and financial speculation, can  play a major role in timing the rhythms of real investment, at least in a part of the world economic system.  In fact, in open economies, the differences in average profitability between different countries can reduce capital sources for real investment in one country by means of capital transfers, in direct but also financial forms, towards other countries.

Moreover, the paper shows how, beside the rates of return, the liquidity degree of the assets can also be a very important determinant in portfolio choices by corporations, in close connection with business fluctuations. Thus, portfolio choices by corporations also and indeed above all depend on the uncertainty degree of their economic environment, which can induce hoarding phenomena which are, ultimately, the real prime mover of decreasing aggregate investment.