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

Markets - Filtering out all the moving parts in the market is a real big challenge. He tries to look at the longer term trends. One of his key metrics is lead indicators. Currently he is seeing a little bit of soft patch for the fall. Not anything to worry about yet but could be something down the road that he could be concerned about. He is seeing pretty good growth momentum in the US economy, slowly and steadily improving. Asia right now, China in particular is right on the borderline of the growth pace of 7.5%-8% that they are looking for.

Markets - TSX is not necessary attractive right now. Primarily made up of financials, gold and oil. Oil seasonal period that tends to do well has just finished but it didn't do so. This is telling us that there is more underlying weakness. There are times in the summer that you want to be focused on consumer staples, utilities, healthcare and there are opportunities for agriculture later on in the summer and heating oil later on in the summer.

Technical analysis on penny stocks? Very difficult to apply technical criteria on a small stock compared to the large ones. Penny stocks are news driven. You can use technical analysis at little bit but much more important is the news that is coming in.

Gold - The stocks tend to outperform gold bullion in July until September however, investors should be cautious.

Your book identifies a season of play switches between American equities in winter/spring and into American government bonds in the summer. Could you switch between Canadian bond ETF's and Canadian equity ETF's in the same way? The same trends apply in Canada. Good strategy.

Silver. Has just dipped below $30. Chart shows a descending triangle and if it breaks down further that is very negative. He is bearish on silver at this point. Seasonally, silver can do really well in September and in November and then the next run is from January until March.

Markets. All the macroeconomic data coming out now is starting to really question a lot of investors’ thoughts as to how well the recovery is occurring. A lot of the macroeconomic data is starting to slow and valuations are starting to get a little stretched. However, North America is looking pretty good.

Seen a big push into the resource sector, people chasing commodities since the 2008 crisis and the market has raised about $10 billion in 3000 financings. We are going to see the net result of that and it wont be good for junior mining. There is too much paper and not enough liquidity. We will see some real destruction across the board in the junior sector. It will be a terrific opportunity since we will be throwing out the good with the bad. What he is doing is watching for value. Buy it when it is selling below what it is worth.

Nevada has been a great place to be exploring. Recent discoveries by ABX. They are so rich and so big when you find carlin deposits.

Copper: Should be flat this year with China slowing. There could be a deficit in copper at some point and it takes so long to bring the mines into production.

You have to keep in mind what interest rates are relevant. REITs borrow on the 10-year rate. Not that concerned with the short end of the interest rates. REIT mortgages are not tied to short-term rates. Biggest risk in his business is the operational risk. Doesn’t think people will think that REITs have had a good run and should wait.

How would you structure the fixed income component of an RRSP portfolio? Depends on your risk tolerance. If you are close to retirement, do you have enough money salted away that you can withstand financial fluctuation.

US stock market has outperformed Canadian. Would you take money out of the US market and put it into Canadian? He would from both the timeframe and rebalancing aspects.

Save on tax by using RRSP’s but how can we offset the high taxes when we take our money out? A wife and husband can split income and when you convert to a RRIF, pension income can be split up to 50/50.

Would you have an ETF in a TFSA account? He would recommend this. Since you are putting in $5000 a year, it wouldn't hurt to put them into a different ETF.