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

BCE Bonds. Would actually look at them right now. Fairly interesting. Likes the fundamentals of BCE for the bonds. Long bonds 2035 maturity are 3.5% over government of Canada Bond's.

GMAC maturing May 25/10 at 6%. The riskier of his 3 Top Picks. GMAC owns ResCap, which has exposure to the sub prime market. Taking a lot of hits and if you can get past this, there are a lot of positive things.

Government of Canada or province of Ontario bonds. He is currently looking at the shorter-term bonds. Right now there is an inverted yield curve, so 2 year Canada bonds are 4.7% and 30 years are 4.5%. More value in the 5 year and under from both Canada and Ontario bonds..

Government of Canada – Sept 2009 @ 4.25%. If things do deteriorate in the credit market, you'll be able to sell this.

Interamerica Bank (Iceland) 2008 13% Bond. You are dealing with a kroner yield. You have to dissect the currency. The Icelander kroner is well regarded.

(2029 5.75% Canada Bond was a Top Pick June 14/06. Up 2.1%.) Had believed there was a structural change in interest rates and that real rates would drop.

(Top Pick July 25/06 was Gov’t of Canada 10-yr bonds, yielding 4.4%.) Had expected economies to be substantially weaker.

All 3 Top Picks of Dec 6/05 were not available on North American exchanges, so were not recorded.

5.7% Shaw bonds maturing Mar 12/17 yielding 6.50%. Shaw is continuing to improve its business.

4.5% Telus bonds maturing Mar 3/12 yielding 5.78%. Likes the sector and the company.

3.75% Canadian government bonds maturing Jun 1/09 and yielding 4.59%.

2 year 4 quarters 2010 Bank of Nova Scotia Bond. A senior deposit rated double A. About a 5% yield. Very low volatility.

Bank of Canada. Looking for a 25 basis point hike in July, bringing the overnight rate up to half. With the strong $ and the weakening equity market, they may be on hold for the summer. Maybe do another in the 4th quarter.

Greater Toronto Airport Authority bond. Very stable credit and low volatility. This falls under the infrastructure category, essentially a monopoly type of service. Very little risk of default. Single A rating.

5 year GIC. Doesn’t know that he would like to lock in all of his funds for 5 years. If it’s one part of your portfolio, that’s OK. Try to ladder it with some floating rate money, money market fund or market securities.