A Comment -- General Comments From an Expert (A Commentary)

Markets. 5^th anniversary of the start of the US bull market. He is sitting on a fair amount of cash on the sidelines. US markets were a little ahead of fundamentals last year, but they are holding. Barring Geopolitical effects, the recovery is taking hold. Thinks he will get an opportunity to load up on opportunities. He thinks there are bargains in energy. Financials are okay and represent fair value. It is a stock picker’s market. Market pullbacks are a buying opportunity.

Holding only banks. If you have a very large nest egg, and can live off the dividends, you could make a case that banks are an adequate diversification. He likes to see diversification across different industries.

Tonight's show was purely on taxes and there were no opinions expressed about stocks or bonds.

Markets. Thinks TSX will outperform S&P. He moved positions back into Canada and thinks it will continue for the remainder of this year. Canadian stocks present an opportunity. Materials and Energy are attracting a lot of interest. Q2 and 3 should be volatile, but Q4 should offer opportunities.

Markets. The market is moving a little ahead of earnings and we will see disappointment when the earnings come in lower. Emerging markets are where to look for value. Don’t go in when the knife is falling, but wait until there is some stability. He is snooping around Russian and eastern European stocks. He has some dry powder. He looks at job data, Mastercard spending, but it is a bumpy ride for the US. Asia is still significantly ahead of other parts of the world and Latin America is falling into a hole. He is focusing on companies that have very good fiscal balance sheets.

Markets. Earnings are good to justify stock price. Earnings a year ago were just about under expectations so there was a lot of multiple expansions. Going forward you won’t see the same multiple expansion so we need that earnings growth to continue and she expects 9% earnings growth this year. China have announced that they want to grow GDP at 7.5%. The shadow banking environment has been a concern. The Chinese usually achieve what they want. Stocks are still the most attractive place to find growth.

Markets. It’s been 5 years since the great recession. We all anticipated some slow growth, but right now we are going backward a little. Job growth, housing starts, and retail sales just aren’t happening. We could be just a little overvalued. He’s never been a big GDP guy, but if you look at GDP percentages, we are really up there. In Canada our markets are doing okay because we were in the doldrums for so long. The risk/reward ratio does not seem to be there. Investors should rally think about and study stocks and ETFs they are thinking of purchasing. With ETFs you can see a trend in the markets and buy it. ETFs are great for that.

Payout Ratio Greater than One – Is it Legal? Be careful with them. A lot of oil stocks are over 1. Sometimes they have high payout ratios and it is not going to survive. Don’t buy something where it is well over 1.

Mutual Funds vs. ETFs. Actively Managed ETFs can be very similar to a mutual fund but the ETF is cheaper. ETFs are more liquid.

Markets. On the whole, major miners’ all in cost of gold is $1400/oz. Gold is $1325 an ounce so they are not making money. If you stop sustaining your businesses you can bring costs down but then your business goes away. You need to replace every oz of gold you produce or you lose your reserves. He thinks we are now in a peak discovery period. Unless we see a real increase in the gold price he doesn’t see how we make the discoveries to keep up with production.

Market for financing for Juniors has turned around to some degree. Companies with a decent looking resource are bringing money. For explorers, it is still a really tough environment.

Global outlook for mining 2015/16. If the population increases and we keep using metals, then we need to produce more than we do now. We need to find more deposits than we are currently finding. Metals prices have to go up. 2015/16 looks very good.

Markets. The world is growing including China. If you have a real project. The world is not a bad place. A speculative frenzy just happens when you least expect it.

Markets. Not sure the bottom is in for the mining area. Longer term, bottoms are forming. JX-T is the TSX venture exchange ETF. Uranium at $35 means there is a lot of production that just can’t come out of the ground. Right now the driver is not currency, but geopolitical risk. China is going to grow because they are going to grow, but it will be less than in the past. Demand for commodities will not be what it used to be.

Copper. When China produces better numbers than expected, Copper upticks but it does not stick. He does not see a big demand pull from them in the next couple of years. Investing in hard goods is something China will probably do for 20 years. Copper stocks probably won’t take off in a big way, though.