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

The NY Times' Upshot blog summarizes Merrill Lynch's survey of global portfolio managers and finds an interesting contradiction,

"A record share [of managers], 46 percent, say equity markets are overvalued…But that hasn't changed the net percentage who say they're overweight equities, which is currently 0.3 standard deviations above the historical norm. Some may be getting a bit queasy, but no one's allowed off the ride anytime soon.. [the] shift in profit expectations is what BAML calls an 'ominous inflection point' for risk-on trades. The jubilation of January has given way to summer doldrums and an increasing sense of dread, but there's still nowhere to go but up."

"Stocks Are Pricey, Let's Buy More" – NY Times Upshot (click through for charts)

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A prominent bear on Chinese growth calculates there's almost $7-trillion (U.S.) in bad debt floating around in the economy,

" Charlene Chu built her reputation as China banking analyst at credit rating agency Fitch, where she was among the earliest to warn of risks from rising debt, especially in the country's shadow banking system… In her latest report, Ms Chu estimates that bad debt in China's financial system will reach as much as Rmb51tn ($7.6tn) by the end of this year, more than five times the value of bank loans officially classified as either non-performing or one notch above. That estimate implies a bad-debt ratio of 34 per cent, well above the official 5.3 per cent ratio for those two categories at the end of June."

This sounds like a recipe for disaster, particularly for commodity investors, but there's a catch – China is rich. Predicting when a collapse in growth (and by extension commodity demand) will occur is almost pointless when previously, Chinese authorities have just ordered banks to refinance bad loans, and will likely eventually take most of the bad debt onto government balance sheets to keep the growth party going.

"Prominent China debt bear warns of $6.8tn in hidden losses" – Financial Times

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More positively, for all the negative political news, global economic growth appears to be on solid footing, a positive sign for Canada's cyclical-heavy stock market,

"'The global economy is in better shape than it has been in several years,' said Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank AG in New York. 'We just don't see what would be a trigger for a recession.' He called it a 'Goldilocks' scenario for stock market investors, with the economic recovery solid enough to generate higher corporate profits but not so fast as to lead to a rapid pickup in inflation and interest rates. "

"Global Economy Looks Set for a Year of Faster, Firmer Growth" – Bloomberg

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Tweet of the Day: "@Mark_J_Perry US oil production topped 9.5M bpd last week. Since the Shale Revolution, there have only been 9 wks when output was higher. @EnergyTomorrow " – (chart) Twitter

Diversion: "RANKED: The 21 best heist movies of all time" – Business Insider

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