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

Refining and Marketing areas: Might be a contrarian play. When oil rose refiners and marketers dropped. You might look at establishing positions in Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD-T), Parkland Income Fund (PKI.UN-T) and Valero Energy (VLO-N), which have been killed.

Canadian Housing Trust Dec 15/12. 4.55% and yield to maturity 3.9%. - 100% guaranteed by the government of Canada. Trades 48 basis points above the equivalent rate of the Govt of Canada.

Investing in bonds through an Indexed Bond Fund or Actively Managed Fund? – ETF’s ar your best bet. They are exchange traded with modest expense ratios.

Long Term Bonds: - Technically in a bear trend right now, but won’t sell of very much because we are at a time when inflation scares will be behind us fairly soon. Probably a good Buy right here.

GE Capital Bond due June 10/0: - A triple A rated security so wouldn’t have any concerns on this. GE is a massive company with massive resources and has no dent in their armour yet that has made anyone nervous.

Bank Perpetual Preferred Shares: - Doesn’t like perpetual preferreds and would never buy them in the 1st place. Have been suffering along with the long term bond prices. If you own, not sure that he would sell them.

Shorting vs. Inverse ETF’s: -Problem with using inverse ETFs as a short in a portfolio is that you don't have the torque of an individual stock.

Canadian Banks: Not a huge fan of banks. Negative on US financials as there will be consolidation and more bad stuff to come. If you own a Canadian bank, trading is not a bad idea. She expects a bounce so over the next couple of weeks there could be a selling opportunity and then you could buy them back when they drop.

Thinks gold stocks are a very expensive way to play gold. He would prefer the ETFs. Thinks it quite likely that gold will breach the $1000 level and will move higher. Gold should only be about 10%-15% of anyone's portfolio.

Preferred Shares: - He believes there will be higher interest rates so he would not buy the perpetual preferreds as they behave like a long-term bond.

Precious Metals: His company is very bullish on precious metals. Owing gold is a form of protection from the current banking problems. Prices of gold and silver have gone up but the junior stocks haven’t. It is getting tougher to raise money, so whoever is producing today will have their stocks going higher. Investors are not as interested in those with early stage projects with a lot of risk.

Gold: Very short term it has a great technical foundation. US$ is having a hard time getting back on its feet again. Gold could be taking a run back to $1000 again. Beyond that, he expects the US$ to bottom relatively soon or at some point this year. Once there is a firmness in the US$, there could be a massive exodus out of the commodity market in general.

There is a very real risk in this market these days and you have to assess whether businesses are going to be able to overcome the macro issues at the market level.

Wimax: Radio system for providing high bandwidth connection. Very young and only a couple of companies are trying to put it out. Doesn’t have a very bright future. Several similar systems have been attempted back to 1999 and all went bankrupt.

Bank Preferred Shares: Generally doesn't like to take the equity risk that is associated with them. However, tax laws make dividend yields very attractive. Feels they are safe. Makes sense for a small portion of your portfolio but would diversify between banks.