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

Markets. You have to look at whether the emerging world story is over when deciding if commodity prices will continue to increase. It is not over. But the Gold mining sector is making new lows. M&A is the way we are going to get growth going forward. The stocks will get punished if they over pay.

Bond ETFs that hold to maturity. “Target date ETFs”. No interest rate risk.

Educational Segment. Look at gold price as a percentage compared to gold mining equities over the last 7 years. Equities are flat while gold has gone up 200-300%. The costs of production are going up at a significant clip. When they find new reserves, the quality of the reserves are declining. They are going after gold dust. The gold industry needs something like Fracking. Or it could be more disciplined in capital spending. A lot of cost inflation in gold mining is related to oil prices. All the central banks have been buying but gold has not broken out.

Markets. Nobody wants these stocks. It is a very tough environment. Budgets are tight. He is seeing some acquisitions but the biggest issue is that investors are just not buying.

Oil. Trading right around the low end of where it should be. The range in the course of the year will be $92-$105. Key for improving prices in oil and all commodities is global growth resuming. In general, resource stocks are challenged, commodity prices are challenged and there are a handful of commodities that look attractive presently, with oil probably being one of them.

Metals. Tin is primarily used as a solder. There has been a very strong uptake in the shipments of electronics, out of Asia in particular, and as well you have the major producing regions rolling over so supply is very tight. Tin is even tighter than copper. There is an ETF on the London exchange, but other than that he can’t think of any pure plays in tin.

Markets. Feels that 2013 will end higher than what it is today. He is looking for deep value plays, stocks trading below NAV and low cash flow multiples. Finding a lot of these in the US. There are trillions of dollars sitting in bank accounts in the US.

Markets. The positive action earlier this week and last week, was really about short covering. On a broad basis, it looks like the indexes are in a Topping phase. Year-over-year the markets have probably had their best run but selectively there are still some great parts to be invested in such as healthcare, biotech, pharma and consumer staples.

Markets. Thinks there will be a lot of headwinds. He was bullish but now he is tempering. He doesn’t know what is going to cause markets to move higher. Bad news with timed deadlines, it never materializes and never causes any grief. The debt ceiling is not worth worrying about.

Stop Losses: Putting it on a white board doesn’t work because you think twice when it is triggered. When setting it you have to look at charts. You can’t just use a percentage. The objective is to keep moving the stop higher as the stock goes up. He is in the dividend camp. It is all about dividend payers and growers.

Markets. He has felt over the last little while that there would be a slight pullback and so increased his cash position to about 7% and also added Government of Canada Bonds. This is a shorter term thing and an opportunity to buy stocks that he likes cheaper (5-7%). He is bullish otherwise. US economy is healing itself and Europe is stabilizing. The ECB has put a line in the sand and that has really helped out. The world is looking slightly better. The world can grow at 2-3% and we can chug along. Companies are in great shape from a balance sheet perspective and can increase dividends. You can own really great companies at reasonable prices and they pay you a nice yield.

Banks. Doesn’t see why banks would not split their stocks again. But it doesn’t affect anything. It just makes it more affordable to retail investors. That may happen if they go any higher from here.

Oil. Expects share prices to rise through 2013. In the 1^st half of this year there are going to be some very volatile differentials for both WTI to the Brent benchmark, (increasingly being viewed as the global standard for oil prices) and between heavy oils and WTI. A lot of issues to do with congestion and pipelines are going to pick up some of the slack followed by a narrowing of differentials. If nothing else changes, the cash flow profile should get better for companies going into 2014 and feels the shares will rise accordingly. A big piece of the puzzle is going to be the increasing tendency of producers to use rail.

Natural gas. Has been down and out and he has been negative on it for a couple of years. In April 2012, it was less than $2 for the NYMEX quote and this marked the bottom for the commodity for him. Still not jumping into the natural gas names but feels more constructive on the space.

Oil/Gas Services. Feels services companies thematically are going to do quite well. Have been some misses but feels there is reason to be optimistic on activity levels in Western Canada and it will be going up in years to come, particularly with a lot of joint venture dollars and the M&A that has happened in the space.

Markets. It’s a funny market. Seems to rush in one direction and then another. Some days he can’t figure out why it’s doing what it is doing. Canada lags the US because our big areas, commodities, are under pressure. There are still more questions to be asked about the mining stocks. Gold had a little flip but whether it has bottomed or not is a question. People are fed up with their mining stocks. How do we get a reasonable price on our oil? Most of our fixed income stocks such as pipelines, utilities and other yielding stocks were doing okay.