Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)

Very solid balance sheet. Highly levered to markets. You will need a lot for it to happen in order to go up. Prefers banks, BNS-T especially. It will be positive if they buy CI.

Expects we will see some fairly good results from life insurers’ reports that will be coming out shortly. They tend to do fairly well in environments where rates are moving up. This company is well-capitalized. Over the last number of years they have done much to de-risk the company.

(Market Call Minute.) This would be the conservative end of your portfolio. Market is performing quite well and they have to invest premiums and the lifecos are in favour again.

(Market Call Minute) Pretty fairly valued. Has a lot of exposure to Asia.

Has had a great run, relatives to some of the bank stocks and he prefers bank stocks at this particular point in time. (See Top Picks.)

This is one that you can wait for more, even though it is up 64%. This is a beneficiary of higher interest rates. A good hedge in the portfolio. Have done a much better job of hedging the equity portfolio. Decent yield that he feels is pretty secure.

Has benefited from both higher equity markets and rising interest rates. He would suggest that you could enter this one but not all at once. Stagger it is little bit.

Hedged their interest-rate risks, as well as the equity risks to a large extent. It had a run when interest rates went up a bit but that is probably in the stock now. From here on he considers it a “show me” stock in that they have to grow their core business again. It is really what they do in Asia, which is a long-term project.

The PE was huge compared to SLF or Power Financial. There was huge anticipation of a turn-around. It is happening but not as fast as the market anticipated. They will do okay over time and the company is well run but the stock looks expensive.

Did phenomenal well since last November. But in the last week or so, there was good news but the stock is not responding. Broke below 20 day moving average and underperformed TSX. A good time to take profits.

(Market Call Minute) Great beneficiary of higher interest rates and a strong investment portfolio.

Interest rates are not that high so he thinks a lot of expectation is built into the stock price right now. Fundamentally it is overvalued and you can find better opportunities in other financial services companies. They recently got out of their Taiwan division, which tells us that even now Asia is a hard place to make money. This should trade at BV which, currently, is about $13.

This company will benefit from a higher interest rate environment.

This is a name that is just going to go higher. It is still under-owned in people’s portfolios. Rising yields and rising equity markets are going to be a wind at their back. Getting into new businesses and he expected them to have new business strain costs as a result, but those costs have been lower than expected. Sees it as an upside in Asia and the US.

Thinks the stock goes higher and expects we will see a dividend increase at the end of this year or into January. However, the stock is getting up there. Thinks the quarter coming out next week will be flattish and might take $0.50 off of the stock. It is more of a Buy in the $17 area. 2.8% dividend yield.