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

Markets. We are in a strong market but there is very good relative performance from companies with stable cash flow and likelihood of a growing dividend. Energy and resources are not the sectors providing returns. Now it is financials in the US for dividends.

Pipelines have been a big part of his portfolios and continue to be. It is all about finding revaluation candidates. There is an army of people that will tell you how expensive pipelines are. Most mid-stream energy infrastructure companies will grow their flash flow 10-20% in the next year because of the boom and the long life contracts they have. Likes IPL and KEY.

Is it time to get out of low risk bonds, which grew very little over the past year, and get back into mutuals? Mutual funds by themselves are not going to help you. The real question is, do you want to stay in income i.e. in bonds or something else. Bonds are going to remain disappointing as an asset class for the foreseeable future being at a pretty much all time low in interest-rates. Would recommend you move into stocks primarily but it doesn’t have to be mutual funds. It could be individual stocks or ETFs.

Monthly income funds? A lot of people like regular monthly income but he is not a big fan of them. You can do something similar by having a withdrawal plan (SLIP) through mutual funds. It is usually more tax effective for the 1^st 5 or 6 years than a monthly income fund.

Need some bonds in a portfolio and is looking at CLF-T, CBO-T or CFD-T). Your opinion and suggestions? Of the 3, he would prefer CLF-T and CFD-T. CBO-T is going to be a little bit more riskier because it is going into corporates. CLF-T is a plain-vanilla laddered and very low cost. Doesn’t know that you’re going to make any money on this one in the cycle though. You might be just as well off keeping the money in cash or in a GIC or, just buying a bond to maturity in which you would be guaranteed to make something.

What is a “Flow Through” and how can it reduce income tax? Government allows companies to “flow through” deductions that they would otherwise have. If you want to put money into small, Junior oil companies, you can buy a special kind of share called a flow through, which allows you to deduct 100% of the money that you invest, against all sorts of income. E.G. If you have a taxable income of $150,000, you are in the top marginal bracket. You put $10,000 into a flow through limited partnership or flow-through share, your taxable income goes down to $140,000, just as if you put it into an RRSP. In a year or 2, that limited partnership will roll into an open ended mutual fund, a non-taxable event, so you can sell it if you want.

Focus on paying down student debt or on retirement? You should be paying down student debt. As a student, you have lots and lots of time to start building for retirement. Most student loans are costing 4.5%-5%, which is pretty expensive compared to other debt products.

Portfolio allocation for some one in their 50's? Depends primarily on whether or not you have a pension plan. If you have a pension plan, especially with defined benefits, you can be a lot more aggressive. If you don’t, and you are in your 50s, you should have an equity bias divided between Canadian, US and international stocks. Also, a little bit of some kind of tangible items such as real estate, commodities, gold for diversification.

Converting RRSP into RIF, do I sell all stocks to convert? You don’t have to do anything differently at all. You just sign a RIF application at age 71, or sooner if you wish, and the money just transfers, in kind from your RRSP to your RIF.

An opinion on individual stocks for pension income, compared to ETFs/Mutual Funds. If you have a really, really big account, maybe individual stocks would work. He is talking $2-$3 million. He doesn’t think you can beat diversification that you get with ETFs and mutual funds. Also, feels ETFs usually beat mutual funds hands down on the cost side.

Markets. Getting a little bearish. We’ve had a bull market since March/09 so this puts us into month 50, which is very long in the tooth for a bull market. Also, usually a bull market will end when everything looks fantastic. On the SPDR Financials’ chart, he measured from a financial crisis peak in 2007 and the financial crisis trough in 2009 (the origin of the current bull). Conditions in 2009 were totally reversed from what we have today. This was followed by a long run. You can’t have a bull run without financials. Financials are a key for Fibonacci Retracement which is equal to 38%. It could run up to 50% and then 61% but he thinks it may stop here. Keep an eye on the 50 day and 200 day moving averages.

NASDAQ. NASDAQ Composite Monthly chart shows a “Bearish Rising Wedge” or “Diagonal Triangle”, a very rare pattern which is not seen by a lot of investors. It is extremely bearish. This means that when you get an advance, Buyers come in and then the Sellers come in followed by the Buyers again and so on. This tells him that Sellers are getting more aggressive because the highs are muted.

Markets. We’ve been in a bull market for the last 3 years and Q1 has started the same way. US is definitely rising up. At the end of the RRSP season we might see a bit of a tail off in the normalized way. Europe seems to be all well and good. Japan is in the currency drive to drive the yen down lower. A lot of pockets of uncertainty, but everything right now is good for now.

How do you find out if a company is buying back shares? If you have companies you are interested in, just sign up for their investors/relations sheet. You can also go to www.sec.gov and look up filings. Put in the ticker symbol and it will list the transactions. This is done quarterly in the US.

Do you think shipping will take off. If so would you favour conservative names like Diana Shipping (DSX-N) or also include some high beta names like Dry Ships (DRYS-Q) and Genko (GNK-N)? There is an oversupply and a lot of big ships are coming online in the next 2-3 years. You would need to invest at the right time and if you don’t, you can get a nasty capital loss. His preference would be Orient Overseas Shipping (316-HK) out of Hong Kong, which he has been looking at.