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

How do you make money these days: Dividends! He looks all over N.A. for free cash flow, distribution or dividend, strong balance sheet.

There’s a strong possibility that it could be a severe slow down, but there is a good possibility that we could escape it. So far it has been a financial recession, not an inventory recession. These take a long time to work through the system (we are at 2 of 7 years). We are going to see muted growth. A recovery without great gains in employment. His clients are in balanced portfolios. He stays at the short end of bonds. In the stock market, you take some capital risk. You need a 5 year time horizon.

Fundamentals on Gas have only gotten worse. The gas price to earn a 15% rate of return is about $3.30 to $4.30. Pretty high supply and tempered demand. Oil has been falling off, based on news of slowing global economic growth. But there are opportunities: dirt-cheap companies; balance sheets that can withstand low natural gas prices for the next 1-2 years.

Growth stocks in RRSP and TFSA accounts and dividend stocks in a normal count? This gives you tax optimization and is a great personal finance principle that has been used for generations.

Most indexed funds and ETFs are similar in what they are trying to do but he feels most ETFs are better in the way they go about doing it. You can trade ETFs throughout the day. The main difference is, look under the hood to see what they are tracking and also the costs.

NASDAQ 100 Equity Hedged-CAD ETF (ZQQ-T) versus S&P 500 (CAD-Hedged) ETF (XSP-T)? His preference would be the 500 stocks as opposed to 100 in the NASDAQ.

ETFs to capture future world demand for Canadian resorts is/commodities? S&P/TSX Materials (XMA-T) and S&P/TSX Base Metals (ZMT-T) are 2 that come to mind. Claymore Global Agriculture (COW-T) is not necessarily a Canadian story is probably a good long-term investment as well.

REIT convertible debentures? Generally not a fan of either the debentures or the companies that issued them. Basically they guarantee dilution in the future. 2 companies, Cominar (CUF.UN-T) and Dundee (D.UN-T) have almost 30% or more of their equity market cap in them.

As trusts in other sectors convert to corps and investors turn to REITs, is there danger of a REIT bubble? A lot of capital is flowing into yielding securities such as treasuries, bonds, bond funds, etc. Currently they are trading at 14.2X free cash flow, which is slightly rich so he has been exhibited in cash.

Preferred versus common shares? Preferreds stand above common shares in the capital structure giving them rights to receive dividends before common shares. Preferreds are often bought as a bond substitute.

Intel (INTC-Q), Oracle (ORCL-Q) or Cisco (CSCO-Q)? Each one of these is a market leader in its own category so it would be reasonable to hold all of them.

Top Picks include 3 bonds, short term, medium term and long term. BMW Corp. 3.22% due 3/28/13 bond. (Short Term) Company has a very good product offering. Improving margins. Weak euro favours them.

Top Picks include 3 bonds, short term, medium term and long term. CDP Financial 4.6% due July 2020. (Medium Term) Carries the largest pension fund in Canada.

Medium term Canada Housing Trust bonds? As an alternative to government bonds, it makes sense from a credit risk standpoint. From a valuation standpoint they would prefer provincials, which gives a higher premium and the credit risk is very limited.

Volumes. When the stock is moving up, the volume is generally at the beginning and gradually lightens as the move advances. Then there is a move into a sideways pattern when volume subsides again. If you get a new move up, the volume will increase again.