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A roundup of what The Globe and Mail's market strategist Scott Barlow is reading today on the Web

The M.I.T. Technology Review dashed hopes for an imminent clean energy future,

"Fifteen years ago, Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant's worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. … Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 degress Celsius, as the 2003 Science paper found, we are adding around 151 megawatts. That's only enough to power roughly 125,000 homes. At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries.

"At this rate, it's going to take nearly 400 years to transform the energy system" – M.I.T. Technology Review

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Elsewhere in energy markets, Citi analyst Edward Morse threw cold water on the mid-term oil price outlook because of low corporate spending on finding new supplies,

"Citi notes not only a potential 20-30% increase in North American upstream capex in 2018, along with significant productivity gains, but also the 7+% global rise along with stable, even declining costs in oil sands, deep water and conventional energy, that portend robust supply in the next five years… deep water projects now look to be halving in costs and time to first oil. The IEA's recent Oil 2018 report indicated that the US alone could supply up to 60% of demand growth over the next half decade. "

"@SBarlow_ROB Citi is not buying the 'medium term oil shortage' story" – (research excerpt) Twitter

See also: "@tracyalloway Explosive growth in oil trading. Citi: Boom in ETFs and systematic strategies mean NYMEX WTI/ICE Brent futures are sometimes equivalent to 15 *billion *barrels a day -- surpassing the physical supply/demand of circa 95 million barrels." – (chart) Twitter

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Argh. With the removal of Secretary of State Tillerson, the U.S. president is another step from acting completely without adult supervision,

"U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports and will target the technology and telecommunications sectors, two people who had discussed the issue with the Trump administration said on Tuesday… [the president] is targeting Chinese high technology companies to punish China for its investment policies that effectively force U.S. companies to give up their technology secrets in exchange for being allowed to operate in the country, as well as for other IP practices Washington considers unfair."

"Trump eyes tariffs on up to $60 billion Chinese goods; tech, telecoms, apparel targeted" – Reuters

On the other hand … "Yes, China Does Cheat In Trade - The Rest Of The World Needs To Wake Up" – Carson Block, Forbes

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Goldman Sachs strategist David Kostin pointed out something important for investors as interest rates rise,

"Interest rates present a more substantial risk to equity valuations than they do to earnings. Because corporate borrow costs are historically low and interest coverage is still elevated, we estimate that a 100 bp increase in 10-year Treasury yields would reduce S&P 500 return on equity ("ROE"), excluding Financials, by less than 50 bp (from a current level of 19%). Financial earnings benefit from high rates, so the overall impact on S&P 500 profitability is surprisingly small."

"@SBarlow_ROB GS: "Interest rates present a more substantial risk to equity valuations than they do to earnings" – (research excerpt) Twitter

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Tweet of the Day: "@RodGordilloP Great Infographic on most documented cognitive bias visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/upl… " – Twitter

Diversion: "Stephen Hawking, Physicist Who Reshaped Cosmology, Dies at 76" – Bloomberg

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