A roundup of what The Globe and Mail's market strategist Scott Barlow is reading this morning on the World Wide Web.
Predicting disaster for the Canadian economy has become a bit of a cottage industry in the global media. Yesterday, The Economist chimed in with an opinion that the domestic economy and financial system benefited more from luck than successful management during the financial crisis and that luck might run out.
Canada has not learned every crisis lesson – The Economist
This week's Ira Sohn Conference in New York featured a who's who of hedge fund and strategist heavyweights including Paul Tudor Jones, James Grant, Bill Ackman, and Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn. Absolute Return's Simone Foxman provides an extremely helpful synopsis of the views and specific stock picks of each.
Sohn Conference 2014: Picks from Ackman, Einhorn, Robbins and More – Absolute Return
Matt Levine is one of my favourite, most entertaining writers on business and his post on hedge fund manager's salaries is well worth a read. On the other hand, I find it a difficult issue to get worked up about. The huge fees hedge fund managers make are not hidden and if well-heeled investors want to keep handing over their savings to under-performing products it all really just works out to be a redistribution of wealth from the rich to the really, really rich.
Billionaire Hedge Funders Made Money the Old-Fashioned Way – Matt Levine, Bloomberg View
Developed world demographics – specifically, the increasing costs of an aging population – has loomed over the long-term outlook for equity investors for a long time. But, as the Washington Post notes, the dangers may have been overstated, and investors might not be facing the wealth-crushing Armageddon that many have predicted.
Maybe we're not headed for demographic armageddon after all – Washington Post
A global shortage of nickel is providing a rare bit of good news for investors in the mining sector. Reuters reports that an export ban in Indonesia has sent the commodity price soaring.
China, Japan scramble for nickel after Indonesian ban – Reuters
Follow Scott Barlow on Twitter at @SBarlow_ROB.
Scott Barlow