本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Crescat Capital sees the Canadian economy heading for recession as the housing market buckles. That might be bad enough for the banks but they face an added strain: outside the financial sector, more than 80 per cent of Canadian companies aren’t generating enough cash to support their businesses, the highest in the world, according to Crescat.

“Canadian banks will be left holding the bag and the ones to suffer from what is likely to be a major economic recession,” Tavi Costa, a global macro analyst at Denver-based Crescat, said by phone.

Crescat has only US$55 million under management, but it returned 41 percent in its Global Macro Fund last year and 32 per cent in its Long/Short Fund, bolstered by a short wager on China, according to its website. That put the company among the top performers in a year in which the industry saw its biggest loss since 2011, declining 4.1 per cent, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.

The country’s biggest lenders are Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank, along with Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and National Bank of Canada. Costa declined to name the banks Crescat was shorting. Representatives for Canada’s six biggest banks didn’t immediately comment or declined to comment.

Crescat’s short comes amid long-standing warnings from economists, investors and even the Bank of Canada about elevated consumer debt, which was driven higher by a decades-long housing boom. Canada’s ratio of household debt to income has been hovering at about 175 per cent for the past two years, compared with a peak of about 134 per cent in the U.S. at the height of its housing bubble in 2007.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net