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

Markets: Hopefully the Rally will continue. Each year we have at least 5 drops of 5% or better. He is quite bullish on earnings and equity markets over the next 2 to 3 years. He won’t touch US financials until they can raise dividends. He is watching them carefully. Cyclical have an attractive entry point. US Mega caps are approaching or over par and people should take advantage of them.

Markets: A couple of weeks ago we got a lot of sentiment and momentum indicators said it was time for a pause. Sees that for the next couple of weeks and then we are back into the race. Right now, he loves the banking sector. Energy has been attempting a breakout and metals as well. Banks had a crummy year last year.

Bollinger Band: Volatility bands. A 20-day moving average and then the computer will calculate two standard deviations away from it. They should capture the volatility of that stock. When they move into the top or the bottom of the band. When the bands are squeezing, things are staying a little too quiet and so it will soon break out.

Silver: Charts are some of the best things to use when you are looking at commodities. Silver is an industrial commodity but gold is purely a chart based metal. Right now we are at a head and shoulders pattern in silver. You want to see a breakout of the neckline. It needs to stay there at least 3 trading days.

Markets: China has been decelerating a little bit. Some people think China will have a hard landing. In Canada that would have a big impact, but the Chinese have a lot of tools in their arsenal. It is one more peg that is being removed from the market. It is one more concerning issue. Greece: The default swaps were triggered and he is not surprised. The markets function based on trust, investors will charge you a very high price in the future. He has a lot of cash in his portfolios. Energies have been weak, mining and gold have been week. Financials have been performing very well. Fewer and fewer stocks are holding the markets up at these levels and a lot of damage is being done. All of these things are piling up.

Markets: If you watch what happened last year, this year doesn’t look much different than last year. Just because we have some kind of deal in Greece doesn’t mean we have fixed anything. There are individual names that might have good things happen to them, but as for commodities, nothing much will happen.

Growth has been tremendous on apple which has boosted the smp. Not expecting a correction. Maybe 5%, but nothing major.

Due to technological improvements in drilling, (Sideways drilling and fracking) The US oil reserves are starting to look good. Is becoming more independent as far oil is concerned.

Markets: High profile investors talking about housing sector, showing signs of life. A lot of people are not fully invested. We got a scare earlier this week. We needed a 3-5% pullback. We will see how it plays out.

Canadian Junior Biotech: Two negatives. 1. He is not a research scientist so has to rely on other people’s research; and 2. There are not a lot of companies in the space. Make sure you buy a basket that come highly recommended. Big pharmas are desperate to add things to their pipelines.

REITS: For US high income REITs, they buy backed mortgages. Find out how they are hedging their interest rates. Sensitive to rates going up or down. Be careful.

Markets: The Greek debt deal will be positive for markets, which are sensitive to any bad news. It has gone through and now we can focus on economic growth. Never thought US would go back into recession. Slow positive growth. China is targeting a slowdown, so that will materialize to a 7.5%-8% range. Europe is in a recession, which we expected. A market pullback or consolidation would not be surprising being the strength we had but she remains constructive for the remainder of the year.

Markets: Canada is very good at financing people to go out and find things, but biggest challenge is ‘where is the money coming from to go and build your project?’ We have another year of financial crisis in Europe. Canadian banks don’t debt finance mines. The money comes from odd places. You have to ask if the team is capable of actually building the mine.

Graphite: Buzz about it. If it is a minor metal or industrial product then you have to be careful of the market cap. You have to buy it with a 5-10 million dollar market cap.

Markets: The cost of production across the board has risen in tandem with the metal itself. Margins are not expanding. They need to find deposits they can put into production at less than the normal cost. Cash costs have doubled in the last 5 years. Reserves are tough to replace. Discoveries have been declining over the last couple of decades. The odds of discovery are really quite low, stunningly poor. The chances of finding a 4 million oz deposit are 1 in 10,000.