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

Gas is taking a big chunk out of the U.S. consumer's disposable income. The U.S. consumer is living pay check to pay check. Recommends not being exposed to stocks with a major exposure to a domestic U.S. consumer.

Big 5 Banks: Has significant exposure in the banking sector. You want to be around market weight. Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Commerce are our biggest exposures. Doesn’t like TD so much.

This is a good time to get your money in. Most gains occur in this 6 month favourable period (now-May). October 28th is buy date. Not a lot of gains occur in unfavourable period.

Seasonality Currency: The U.S dollar should drop until December, but in January it will come back up. Think the Canadian dollar has climaxed.

It is hard to find value in the market in the last few months. Canadian financial services sector is starting to look interesting.

Apple, RIM, and Google stocks are leading the Nasdaq. He believes that without these three stocks Nasdaq is going down. It makes him nervous and he feels the market is in trouble.

Resource sector has a lot of attention. Chinese growth rate is not slowing down. The demand for resources will continue. Oil prices may see a correction but he sees prices being around $72-74. If the oil pipelines in Turkey are attacked, prices will go a lot higher. Drilling activity of natural gas has decreased.

Feels that the US "has been robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Peter's tapped out". Feels Bush, before leaving office, will take some direct action against Iran. That will not ne good for the stock market, but will be good for oil and gold.

Believes that in the next 52 weeks there will be continueing change in the space and more take outs will occur. Business trusts are not being helped by the high Canadian dollar.

The Alberta economy is slowing down. Their electricity use is lower, because they have less manufacturing companies. Less people are moving out there, the moving companies aren't as busy as they were.

People are more optimistic than pessimistic which from a sentiment perspective makes markets go up. Adding to a short position and betting against the long term views of the market is a very risky strategy, but can make you rich.

With bonds, there’s a good chance interest rates may go lower, because there’s such a demand for yield. The reason the sub-prime market did what it did. 2 real simple bond ETF indexes that trade on the TSX: XBB (broad composite of all bonds in the Scotia Bank universal bonds) and XSB (short term bond index)

When comparing bonds, the one metric that brings all factors together in the bond world is: yield to maturity. From the options perspective: implied volatility, is equivalent.

Using “Puts”. Insurance is always expensive. If you’re concerned about the market the insurance will be more expensive. Use index options if your going to do it, cheaper then “puts” on individual stocks.

Suggests that climate change is an investment opportunity. If you go long on stocks, one of the fields you should be doing well is, the agricultural sector in Canada. Also solar, power (ats automation). If it's contrarion and out of favour they like to look at it.