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

Gold: - Feels that gold stocks will take off like some of the metals stocks did. Looking for $900-$1000 in 2008. Playing the gold/silver market in 2 ways. Bought ETF’s for gold (see GLD-N) and silver (see SLV-A) and balanced that with gold stocks Agnico-Eagle (AEM-T), Kinross (K-T) and Yamana (YRI-T).

Got your Top Picks listed, but have company and the rest will have to wait for a few days. Happy Holidays. Bill

Canadian Banks: - Problems for the financials are still not over. The shoes keep dropping. There's more bad news coming. Might be better in 6 months.

Tonight's program was on wine tasting, No stocks. The next program is not until Thursday Dec 27th so I guess I'm on holidays. Happy holidays to everybody and good investing in the New Year. Bill

“Banks” are an excellent cornerstone for your portfolio. Nice dividend yield, which gives a nice tax credit. Trading right now at very good prices. His holdings are #1 Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS-T) #2 National Bank (NA-T) and #3 Royal Bank.

This has been a horrific year for natural gas. He has seen several statements where companies have cut back on capital expenditures on natural gas. A lot of stocks are trading below NAV. winter has now come to the east coast and consumption on a year-over-year basis will be stronger. It may be a good time to look at these beaten up stocks.

Gold; - Betting that over the next 2 years it will hit $1,000, certainly $850 to $900 next year and after that much higher. It has to do, to some extent, with the fear factor and a hedge against disaster. The more likely reason is that inflation is going to be alive 12 to 24 months out because of all the pump priming that is going on in the US.

Oil/Gas Service Companies: - Drillers will go up before the other service companies, so you want to get into them first. Because the drillers have been hammered, you need to be careful timing wise. If you are looking at buying drillers, such as Precision (PD-T) and Ensign (ESI-T) slowly scale in and make sure debt is not a problem.

Market: “Fear the Greed/Greet the Fear”. When a market is going up and everything seems to be too good, you should worry about the greed. Today, when everything is so negative, fear tends to end the market selloff. Would like to see more fear than there is now. In this situation, you buy like mad. Buying opportunities in energy, gold and base metals should be good in 2008. Financials are probably going to suffer.

Bank Stocks: There are periods of times when even the bank stocks get hurt. Sooner or later they are going to recover. Wouldn't go bargain hunting. These stocks will have to settle down, get the problem out of the way and then will probably make a base giving a buying opportunity again.

Q: S&P 500 lost 10% of its value recently. Is it good for a short rally? A: Yes. The chance will be that not only will the Fed lower rates in December, but also could see a 2% or 3% rally.

Banks: - Would like to be able to say that Cdn banks would be good choices but that would be guessing as to where the bottom is in this overall correction and possible bear market.

National Bank 4.7% bond maturing Nov 2/20. Will probably be called in 2015. For the first time, you are having bank bonds giving you value.

Base Metals - Commodities are correcting. Expects to see some upside, but feels you have to ride out some volatility. Focus on US economic growth is affecting commodity prices, but with continued demand coming out of China and India and the need for commodities over the long term, investors should do very well in commodity plays. Long-term outlook for copper and zinc will be positive. Zinc seems to be in a pretty firm downtrend but thinks it will bottom out here. Copper is moving more sideways and doesn't expect a big uptick in the near term.

Ibiden - Ceramic packaging company. Has about 70% market share a diesel particulate filter of which the demand should double over the next 5 years. This has to go into the exhaust systems of any diesel automobile/transport vehicle made. (Ed. -Listed on the Japanese exchange.)