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

Canada Savings Bonds: A nice way of forced savings via payroll deductions. Very safe. AAA credit rating. Rates of return are not very high. Maturity dates are now much shorter so difficult to lock in rates.

Greater Toronto Airport Bonds due July 2010. One of the hot areas of the bond market right now is infrastructure. This is one of them. Always seems to be expensive to him. No problem with safety.

He is currently about 20% Long and about 14% Short so he has a lot of cash.

Options on a falling US$: Buy a Put on the US$ versus whatever currency you want to trade against. The best way to do this is through Philadelphia's (PHLX) World Currency Options. They are very easy to use.

Calendar Spread is a time premium collection strategy. Ideally the stock should be in a consolidation phase. You want it to be in a sideways trading pattern, not running up or running down. You also have to worry whether the stock is assignable to you because of your option come expiration.

Gold: He is very bullish on gold. Inflation will come back and this will be a hedge. Feels gold will become more and more of a currency alternative. (His approach is to split equally between iUnits Gold (XGD-T) and gold/silver bullion.)

Canadian $: Very bullish on the Canadian$. It's a debt to GDP story. Canada has gone into this situation well positioned.

Stop Losses: In this environment and given the volatility, stop losses worked like they probably never have before. Probably less effective now than they were last fall. You could lose a position that is good value but you could buy back in again.

Canadian Banks: Dividends are all relatively high with Bank of Montreal (BMO-T) paying the highest. His favourites are Toronto Dominion (TD-T) and Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS-T). If there was a broad nationalization of US banks and the equity went away, it might drag ours down a little.

The best way to invest in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) is to do it through an index.

Natural Gas: Hard to believe that gas would be at $4. Fundamentals are pretty positive. One negative is a rumour that there has been a significantly large shale find in the US. Gas drawdowns have been very close to the 5-year average. Until oil prices start to firm up he doesn't think gas has got a lot of legs.

Canadian$: Had a roller coaster ride for the last couple of years. Canadian economy is very much connected to the US so there won't be a stronger dollar until we see some stabilization in the US. Also the dollar is influenced by commodity prices. Expects oil prices to bottom and rebound within the next few months so there will be relative strength coming to the dollar.

Gold: In the next 6 to 12 months believes gold will continue to climb higher because it is a hedge against the US$. However, it has had a very good run in the last little while and is expecting a correction in the near term. Would delay purchasing of gold stocks for a little while.

TSX: Started the year at 9200 and is now below 8000, about an 11% drop. He believes in a recovery in the economy about the 4th quarter. He also sees commodities, especially oil prices, recovering by midyear. Looking for the TSX to being flat or 5%-10% higher than the start of the year, 9700 to 10,000.

Oil: If he were going to do anything, he would probably look at an integrated, not a producer. Where the oil price will be in 2 years is a $64,000 question. He is not going to fight the trend.