Mixed economic messages are causing confusion for investors but some of the risks for the year ahead have been overstated, according to Australian Unity Investments' joint venture asset managers.At a briefing for journalists yesterday, Chad Padowitz, chief investment officer at international equities manager Wingate Asset Management, said that while there was a lot of focus on the ailing commodity markets, there were also positive signs."Our view is that markets are rebalancing to a lower growth world. While volatility will continue to be the new normal, we expect a market floor to be reached shortly," Padowitz said.He later noted that global banks had become a proxy for pessimism, which was a mistake in his view: "Financial stock prices are implying GFC-type scenarios and this valuation mismatch cannot be sustained," he said.By way of example, he pointed out that Visa and MasterCard trade in the US at 20 or 21 times earnings, respectively, while Citi is on seven times earnings and yet distributes MasterCard product. "Over time this mismatch cannot stay at such a massive dispersion between valuations," Padowitz said."The global banks today are very different animals to what they were eight or nine years ago."This time if we were going into a recession they don't have bad debts - outside of the energy space."He said US banks were buying back their own shares, which equates to "buying back your own loans at $0.80 in the dollar", which he said was "significantly EPS accretive".A similar story is playing out domestically, said Don Williams, chief investment officer at Australian equities manager Platypus Asset Management, and a noted stockpicker."The performance of the industrials suggests the economy is not as bad as some pundits suggest, and decent returns can be achieved (which was also the case last calendar year)."Mr Williams added that Platypus was not expecting significant downgrades in this reporting period. He did note though that, while his fund holds three of the four major banks, it was very underweight on that sector, based on his view that EPS for the bank stocks has "dissipated" over the last 18 months. "[Back then] it was growing at five to eight per cent. The new normal in this economic environment seems to be just one to four per cent growth - the love affair between investors and banks is over," he said.Commenting on global fixed income, Bill Bovingdon, chief investment officer at fixed income manager Altius Asset Management, said central banks would wind down their stimulus programs, leaving bond investors exposed.    Despite that, Bovingdon still saw bank bonds as "good value" relative to other corporate bonds.