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

CIBC economist Avery Shenfeld sees household debt having an increasingly negative effect on domestic growth, a prospect that has only been fleetingly evident in the data so far,

“For all the talk about global headwinds … it’s also apparent that an earlier build up in household debt, and its impacts on Canadians’ eagerness to keep up their spending ways, has also been a factor in the anemic pace to growth we saw in the final quarter of last year. Rate hikes that drove up monthly payment obligations in 2018 left Canadians less eager to take on additional consumer credit, while others were pushed into insolvency proposals to deal with what they no longer could afford (Chart). That has retail sales running below year ago levels in the latest data. Cutting interest rates to cure this headache would be like dipping into the sauce to alleviate a hangover”

“ @SBarlow_ROB CIBC: "For all the talk about global headwinds ... “ – (research excerpt) Twitter

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Morgan Stanley’s U.K.-based equity strategist Andrew Sheets remains concerned about earnings fundamentals that currently don’t support global stock prices,

“Markets are always subject to varied and shifting sets of drivers. Over the last 12 months, it has been a story of four – policy, sentiment, valuation and fundamentals. The question for 2020 is whether the last (fundamentals) can ramp back up before the first (policy) fades. It’s a race that makes us more nervous about the market after April … Our economics team sees global growth rebounding and key parts of the manufacturing cycle picking up. But so far, we see this driving only a modest and highly uneven recovery in global earnings… “

“@SBarlow_ROB Sheets: "question for 2020 is whether fundamentals can ramp back up before policy fades" – (research excerpt) Twitter

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BMO economist Doug Porters echoes Mr. Sheets’s sentiment somewhat in a research report published Friday,

“While equities are generating almost as much attention as Megxit, we would note that other financial markets are much less raucous. Bond yields have barely budged on net in the past two weeks, most currencies have slipped slightly against the greenback this year, and commodity prices have mostly chilled after an Iran-led splurge out of the gates. In other words, the overall message from the markets is that nothing truly significant has changed for the economic outlook, despite the ongoing equity party”

“@SBarlow_ROB BMO: " overall message from the markets is that nothing truly significant has changed for the economic outlook" – (research excerpt) Twitter

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CBC published “3 misconceptions about retirement in Canada” late last week.

These are: “1.Most people don’t know their retirement date far in advance … 2. Only a minority become ‘snowbirds’ … 3. Few people work part-time after retirement”.

The details on myth No. 1 were interesting,

“Among the survey respondents, 55 per cent expected to know their retirement date a year or more in advance. But just 39 per cent had that much notice. In fact, 16 per cent had no advance notice of their retirement… Marissa Lennox, chief policy officer for CARP, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, said health is the No. 1 reason people end up retiring earlier than expected”

“3 misconceptions about retirement in Canada” – CBC

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Diversion: “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It: A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says” – New York Times

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