A roundup of what The Globe and Mail's market strategist Scott Barlow is reading today on the Web.
Merrill Lynch's weekly look at sector allocations in their global asset base uncovered near-record selling in interest rate-sensitive, dividend payers,
"Private clients' sales of Telecom stocks last week were the second-largest ever, and net sales of Utilities stocks were also near record levels. Meanwhile, they were big buyers of Tech and Materials stocks last week, where flows by this group were the fifth- and eighth-largest in our data history."
One week does not a trend make but it's important to note that U.S. bond yields have been trending lower, so the selling in dividend sectors there was probably minimal. That means ex-U.S. selling was likely very intense.
"@SBarlow_ROB ML: investors flee bond proxies " – (research excerpt) Twitter
Related: "@SBarlow_ROB UBS: World's most over- and underweight stocks" – (table) Twitter
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Bloomberg makes a valuable observation about the Canadian bond market,
"To get a sense of how blasé investors are about inflation look no further than Canada, which sports both the fastest growth among its developed peers and the flattest yield curve… "The bank can put pressure on the short end of the curve by moving the rates, but the long end is much more difficult to influence," said Randall Malcolm, managing director at Sunlife Investment Management in Toronto which has around C$37 billion in Canadian fixed income. "Inflation has been dead for so long that it's hard to see it coming back strong."
"Flattest Curve in Developed World Tells the Bond Market's Tale" – Bloomberg
"The Bank of Canada's anxiety over Trump and trade point to a pause for rates" – Maclean's
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I'm watching NVIDIA continue to rocket higher while Sheryl Crow's Difficult Kind – specifically the lyric "there's nothing but regret, to remind you you're alive" – plays in my head over and over. I'm fascinated by the company and its central position in the growth of artificial intelligence technology, and wrote a column on it in July. Yet like an idiot, I thought it was technically extended and too expensive, and I did not buy it.
"Nvidia hits another record high as AI takes centerstage" – Reuters
"Nvidia hits a record high as Wall Street begins to understand its dominance of AI" – Business Insider
"'The smartest company in the world': Why this stock could be a solid bet for future riches" – Barlow, Inside the Market (July 12, 2017)
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The Financial Times published "The future of coal in seven charts" Tuesday. The most telling of the graphics shows that coal generates a quarter of all U.S. power but currently accounts for zero per cent of new investment.
" @SBarlow_ROB From the FT: Coal accounts for 25% of U.S. power, 0% of new investment ft.com/content/82f908… " – (chart excerpt, story link ) Twitter
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Tweet of the Day: "@selling_theta NFL still a generational short. Head trauma. Players retiring earlier. There's 7 decent QBs that don't check-down every throw." – Twitter
Diversion: "Psychologists studied 5,000 genius kids for 45 years — here are their 6 key takeaways" – Business Insider
Scott Barlow