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

Ritholtz Wealth Management has posted some hard numbers and useful graphics on the savings rate necessary to maintain standards of living in retirement,

“The first table shows the savings rate you would need in order to achieve a multiple of your final salary, with different rates of return. For example, if you wanted to retire with 20x your final salary, and you earned 7% a year, you would need to save 17% a month. If you wanted to retire with 20x your final salary, and earned nothing on your money, you would need to save an outrageous 73% a month of your pre-tax income… The next problem becomes, once you have a certain multiple of your final salary saved, how long can you live off of that pile of money, assuming you don’t want any drop-off in your standard of living. .. Assuming you save 20x your final salary, which as we’ve already show is very difficult, it’s likely that you can maintain your lifestyle until the day you die, regardless of how you’re invested.”

“How To Maintain Your Life Style in Retirement” – Irrelevant Investor

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Citi strategist Cesar Rojas attempts to answer a key question for investors in the year ahead in “Is the 2020 Global Growth Outlook Half-Full or Half-Empty?,”

“ Our coincident and leading indicators showed some stabilization and slight uptick in Q3-19 … We expect the synchronized slowdown from 2019 to reverse somewhat next year, as our 2020 growth outlook reflects a stabilization in global growth around 2.7% … Looking into the drivers for growth in 2020, our projections are for growth to be somewhat stable for investment but for a slight moderation in consumption… Given solid domestic fundamentals and an economy still closely tied to the US, we see the outlook for Canada as half-full in 2020. A strong labor market throughout 2019 has helped drive a rebound in housing activity, which should continue to strengthen into 2020. Household consumption should also remain supported given the strength in employment and recent rising incomes, despite the still-high cost of servicing household debt.’

“@SBarlow_ROB C sees the the outlook as 'half full' for Canada in 2020” – (research excerpt) Twitter

See also: “PhilSmith26 Canadian investment weak almost everywhere: AB down sharply, due to O&G, comparable to early 1980s. SK and NL also down due to O&G. QC and PE sharply down too, for other reasons. BC, ON, NB, NS in secular decline. Only MB is relatively high, albeit weaker of late” – (charts) Twitter

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Dec. 15 is an important date – new U.S. tariffs on Chinese are set to be enacted.

The White House could delay tariff imposition at any time and markets would view that favourably. The closer we get without a delay, however, the more jumpy equity markets will get. There is a lot of posturing and stick waving right now, and a lesser-covered issue is China’s restricting of U.S. electronics,

“Following the U.S. ban that prohibited domestic companies from supplying equipment to Huawei back in May, the technological Cold War between the U.S. and China just got a bit more intense now that Beijing has ordered all Chinese government and public-facing offices to replace any equipment featuring foreign components…. The Financial Times says that based on estimates from analysts at China Securities, this would mean the Chinese government would need to replace between 20 to 30 million pieces of hardware. Substitutions are slated to start next year.”

“AMD and Intel Could Be Screwed By New Chinese Mandate Forbidding Foreign Technology” – Gizmodo

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Newsletter: “Why your portfolio is like a bar of soap” – Globe Investor

Diversion: “The Best Memes of 2019: Here are the funniest pieces of content the internet created this year” – The Ringer

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