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

Lofecos: Canadian insurance companies in reasonable good shape in terms of capital. They are suffering from the stock market and that will rebound. They also suffer from long-term low interest rates.

In the past bonds were yielding in excess of inflation. For 20 years, bonds outperformed stocks. Today, Inflation is 2.5% but gov’t bonds are yielding 1.5%. Regular bonds make no sense as an investment longer term. Don’t buy bonds if you want to eventually buy and hold stocks later on.

Dividend paying stocks that don’t have a lot of growth move with interest rates. Rates go down and stocks go up. Real return bonds go up when people expect inflation to rise.

UK Banks - Barkley’s and Lloyds: Doesn’t play in that space. Has broader concern with what is going on in Europe. Less worried in last 6-7 weeks but there is more headline risk in the EU. Will have a negative impact on UK banks.

Resource stocks. There was a lot of tax selling last year and now there is a recovery of sorts. They haven't gone up too much so they can go up more before the next correction. Future corrections will not be as deep. Thinks companies are quite active in mergers and acquisitions right now.

Market. Market conditions are getting better, not just in North America, but globally. Can't see a QE3 at this point. QE2 wasn't even that effective.

Commodities. Copper looks awfully good in here. Has had a huge off take from their inventories and cancelled warrants. The demand is out there.

Greece. Market has stopped worrying in a major way. There is sort of a disconnect now between Greece and the rest of Europe and North America so the chances are going down of having a messy default. Their next payment is March 20 so there is a good 6 weeks to fix this.

Markets. Holding roughly 10%-12% cash. This is quite a bit down from where he was in the fall. This is still elevated from normal. We are more than due for a pullback and he has the cash ready as there are things he would like to buy at the right price.

Markets. The S&P 500 for the last 10 years shows the last 5 a little more encouraging but the market seems to be overbought in the near-term. PE multiples are reasonable and he is optimistic the economy globally is improving. Feels that economic growth is going to be pretty good for the coming 1.5 years.

Markets. Not expecting any great plunges. If there is any weakness, he sees it as a buying opportunity. Europe has been doing the right things and it takes a great deal of time to finally resolve all these things. There are strong directional indicators that things are getting sorted out. Currently he is about 65% equities and 35% cash and fixed.

What happens if an ETF company goes bankrupt? These are trusts, which means that the money is kept separate from the corporation that is issuing it. In this case, somebody will probably just take over the assets. You are okay.

For every stock the caller owns, he always sells a Covered Call at something like 15%-20% for a period of 6 months. For every stock you would like to own, he sounds a Put. What Puts selling today and how many months out do you typically try to strategize and what percentage do you try to strategize? Not quite sure where he is getting 15%. He normally like to sell the Calls out 6 months which gives him more downside protection. On the naked Puts, it depends on what your objectives are.

Buying Puts on a stock in a downtrend has been running up before reporting orderly numbers? This would obviously be for a short term hold. Not sure how successful this strategy would be on an ongoing basis for a whole bunch of different companies. This is into the gambling area.

How do Puts work? A Put is similar to shorting a stock. You are buying the right to Put the stock to someone. The difference from shorting is that your losses are restricted to the cost of the Put. In other words, if you buy a $50 Put and the stock goes down to $45, you have the right to Put it to them at $50 so you make $5 minus the cost of the Put. If you had shorted you got a problem.