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

Canadian Preferred Shares: - The key that you always want to look at with preferreds is higher quality. The risk is always going to be around. Not at the top level of a bond but if you go with companies that are not going bankrupt, you get paid very well.

Gold: - Feels it is going to be $1200 to $1500 12 to 18 months out. Will be increased demand from countries globally. Also inflation is back with us significantly higher than currently expected. It could go lower in the near term depending on how strong the US$ is.

Base Metals: - People are so concerned about the US economy and demand for metal and its price will drop. It is just not happening. Chinese demand for metals is very strong. Whether the US economy grows by 2% or falls by 2% it will have very little impact on metal prices.

Sprott IPO: - Eric Sprott has an extremely good track record and is a very good manager. Coming off a very good streak here because he has been forefront in the commodity plays. From the pricing he has seen proposed on it, he would find it a little bit rich.

Economy: - In general, there is an inverse relationship between the price of gold and the US$. There are times when they go the same way. US$ has recently showed strength with some strength in gold. In the near term, gold looks vulnerable to him, possibly 8% to 10% downside.

Sprott IPO: - This will trade both like a financial and a commodity. Because commodity stocks have been hot, it will trade along with commodities. But commodity stocks won't stay hot forever. Eric Sprott is smart with smart people working for him and hopefully they'll know when the boom is over. Very expensive compared to other fund companies. At the high end of the high risk/high reward and of business.

Infrastructure: - Spending on infrastructure has been dramatically under spent for 50 years. We will pay the price going forward. Don't worry about which stock, as they will all perform well.

REITs: - REITs in general have under performed the market for the last couple of years. This is a sector he should be in at these levels. Likes Allied Properties (AP.UN-T) which has done quite well.

Fertilizer Stocks: - Fertilizer stocks have done very well. The premier company is Potash (POT-T) as well as Agrium (AGU-T). At these levels, the multiples are very high so he doesn't own them. If you buy, be prepared for lots of volatility.

Oil in 6 months: - Not good at short-term predictions, but thinks the oil has gotten ahead of itself due to a lot of speculation. Barring some horrible geopolitical event, she thinks it should pull back to the $90-$100 range.

ETF’s: - She doesn't use ETF’s for her clients but they are a good way to get diversification if you want to make sure that you are buying from well known providers. When buying, you have to look at your industry and geographical diversification as you put them together.

Canadian $: - Cdn$ is in a pretty tight trading range. Where it goes will be partly a function of what happens to US interest rates. The $1.10 figure last year was really an aberration. Expect we will stay in the $.97 to $1.02 range. Bank of Canada has indicated they are going to be quite aggressive on interest rates so there will be downward pressure.

Q: Do you Buy a stock and simultaneously Sell a Call option? A: If you are planning on selling a call option on the stock, this is the way he would do it. On the other hand if you are kind of bullish on a stock, and you want to enter a position and hope it rallies a little bit and then sell a Call, that's a different strategy but it works very well too.

Q: Buying Leaps as opposed to buying stock. A: Not a bad strategy at all. A Leap is just a long-term option, so what you are doing is buying longer-term options and selling shorter-term options against it.

Canadian Banks: - He exited the banks in April/07. In the mid-90s, banks traded between 4% and 7% time’s earnings, which grew to 14X earnings. The recent crisis has hurt their ability to generate revenue from some business lines going forward. At best, you'll see flat to slightly growing earnings over the next couple of years. There might be a bounce, but over time there will be a compression of what the market is willing to pay.