Brian Madden's Top Picks: Brookfield Asset Management, Parex Resources, CGI BNN Bloomberg MARKET OUTLOOK: Consistently favorable December seasonality is colliding with heightened inflation and virus variant concerns, igniting long-subdued volatility in the markets in recent weeks. Our outlook for the economy and the Canadian stock market remains favorable, buoyed by expected ongoing above-trend real growth in 2022 (consensus forecasts call for 4.1 per cent real GDP growth) and by extension above-trend growth in corporate profits (consensus forecasts call for 19 per cent growth in S&P TSX index earnings) all while valuations remain undemanding, with the S&P/TSX index trading below 16x 2022 earnings forecasts and yielding 2.6 per cent. Nevertheless, with persistently high inflation, we favour price makers over price takers, we favour companies that can substitute capital and productivity enhancing technology for labour and we favour companies whose products and services address the mass market over those that address mainly the affluent.
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