Canadian Oil Sands (COS.TO)

Has never liked this. You can buy this through buying Suncor (SU-T). This is a one trick pony, Syncrude. They don’t control it. They’ve had to lower the dividend a few times.

Most people don’t like it, but he does. It has been a good turnaround. They are at the tail end of a lot of capital expenditures. They are having higher utilization rates. A long run holding would be well worth it.

It looks like oil will go sideways for a while and it will take a couple of years to balance out. There is still some potential price risk to the downside, but you want to be buying it. Buy it as it develops bases over the next couple of years. If you are going to buy and hold as opposed to trade then this is too soon to get in.

It got hammered last year. He has been watching it. If you could get in at a cheap valuation you could do well. It is on his watch list to look seriously at by year-end.

He got out of it because the lower oil price would hurt it. The dividend cut was needed to keep the balance sheet intact. Longer term you will be fine.

There is very limited growth associated with this company, so it is essentially an oil bond. If your view is that oil is going higher, then it is okay to play it. However, he thinks you are better off with something that offers a little more growth.

Would you consider Shorting this? Whenever you get one that pays a dividend, it gets a little bit dicey when it comes to Shorting. If this broke above the $14 level, he would say that Shorting would be wrong because something else is going on. Right now, he wouldn’t consider Shorting, but would probably go Long. Just keep your Stops tight.

Sold his holdings and has no desire to go back to it. An exceedingly volatile stock. Part of it is because every other day somebody is whispering takeover rumours.

This has very strong seasonal influences. It tends to bottom some time in January and then move higher right through until the end of May. From a technical point of view, it is outperforming the TSE Composite and is above its 20 day moving average. Historically this has done very well to the end of May-June, so you still have another 5 or 6 weeks to go.

At this level of the commodity price, this company does not make a lot of money. Probably break even. Dividend should probably be cut to zero. This owns a piece of Syncrude. The operator of Syncrude is Exxon and there are 7 or 8 shareholders. To him, this company should not exist, but the question is, what is somebody willing to pay for it.

You want to look for oil stocks that have higher relative stocks to the index. This is an underperformer. We are below the lows of 2011/12. It’s a great long term story, but he suggests you look for stronger ones. Compare all energy stocks to XEG-T to determine relative strength.

They have been fraught with production challenges. Views this as a pure play option on the direction of oil prices. Not a great investment to make at this time. He would move into something else.

Pure play on syncrude which is a partnership of a variety of companies. He thinks the chances that there would be a consolidation of the shares in this project would be remote. They are going to be giving a lot more money back to shareholders.

(Top Pick Mar. 21/14, Down 53.17%) He actually made a little money when he sold it in August.

Oil will probably go down a little bit more from here. Thinks you would be better off with a Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ-T) or Suncor (SU-T) which have much better balance sheets, better businesses and better management. If you think oil is going to be higher in the next couple of years, this gives you a real chance to look at these companies, and buy really great companies.