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

The assets of this company have been worked over by a number of management teams. Having difficulty growing it. Higher risk gas reserves in the Rocky Mountain area in ALberta. Not too enthusiastic on the prospects for the future.

(A Top Pick Aug 25/04. Up 25%.) Grown production very dramatically. A lot of interesting exploration prospects.

Bonds and fixed income is difficult and of little interest to us. Nothing came up tonight that was of any value for this site. Sorry.

Continue holding to see how the takeover plays out, but don't buy.

Have been for sale. Feels that a buyer could pay $24, maybe $26 tops and still make some money.

OPTIONS: In the last 50 years, 63% of the total return on equities has been driven by dividends. Cash flow is a very important component in a total return, but most people buy as they are looking for that great growth story. They tend to do covered option writings and take in "option premiums" which enhances the cash flow and forgoes some of the potential upside. E.G. - Bank of Nova Scotia is about $39 now. Sell an option for $40. In the interim, you get about $1.28 dividends. If the stock reaches $40 in 6 months, you have made $1.28, plus $1 on the stock plus $1.50 option premium.

Gold-Going through a pause that refreshes, especially at year end now, it'll be useful for the market to consolidate its really nice gains and into 2005 with the foundation needed to get to that very critical $500 area. Expect by the 1st quarter we'll have a good run at it, but really think that by the summer time we'll have tested it and one of the main reasons is that the honeymoon period for George Bush will be over and some of the geo-political things that have been moved to the back burner since the election will be moved to the forefront again and that will assist and go along with the resolution of the US$ decline. The best way to play this is to own the physical bullion by owning shares that are now trading down in the states. They used to say the proxy for owning gold was mining shares, but this seems to have been disproven. If you want to be very speculative, that is where the mining shares come in.

Fully valued. Not sure there will be a take-out. Will be hurt badly by a strong Cdn$ as all their costs are based on this currency, but their revenues are in US$'s.

Selling CALLS against existing security positions. One of two things will happen. You'll either end up selling your stocks at a higher than current level or, if the market goes down, you are partially protected against the downside. A conservative way of investing, particularly for next year, when markets will probably not do that well.

Brascan is determined to sell it. Prefers other metals stocks. If you own, wait to see what plays out in the next 3/6 months. Fundamentals are fine.

Would be sensitive to interest rate hikes.

The S&P 500 is in an area of major, major resistance going back to the 2002 highs and the 1998 highs. There is a chance it could get to 1,225/1250, but it would be kind of a blow off high. The 1250 area is the technical Fibonacci 61.8% retracement of the entire 2000 and 2002 drop which can sometimes be a flash target technical point for the market to try and get to. Long term US Treasury Bonds which is price inverse to yields. The bond market topped in June/03 followed by a sharp drop. Rallied in Mar/04 followed by another sharp drop. Now on its 3rd rally and appears to be forming a heads/shoulder top. Very dangerous as it shows 4 attempts to make higher prices/lower yields. Could indicate a major market crash.

Company is up for sale.

We were lucky that Kerry did not win the election. He would have had to face a couple of issues. 1st it would require more fiscal responsibility and 2nd it would have been a hung Congress, i.e., himself versus a Republican Congress. This would have made it difficult to get a lot of legislation through. Clinton was in the same situation and it worked out very well because they couldn’t get a lot of spending bills passed and fundamentally, the US kind of cleaned up its act, got into a surplus and the US$ went up and good things happened. The market would not have wanted that this time as it would have meant some kind of fiscal discipline to bear and frankly the US has been living off the fat of rather profligate fiscal spending. To have been pulled up short would have been a problem for the stock market and the US consumer. Problems that go with all the fiscal irresponsibility remain with us in spades. This creates prolonged downward pressure on the US$ for at least the next couple of years which is not good. Makes me a little more bullish on gold, but certainly reinforces my bullishness on oil as OPEC will not put up with continuing erosion in its own US reserves and will counter this with upwards pressure on the price of oil.

Merger with Coors will probably be delayed until early 2005. Strategically, the merger is a good idea.