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

Really working here. If Trump gets in, there will be volatility and gold will probably continue to work. Gold also works with lower interest rates, with questions about the USD, and with a thirst from Chinese investors. So it has strong backdrops.

As for weighting in a portfolio, there's no one formula. Depends on your risk tolerance. Gold tends to only act well at certain points. So if you're looking for more steadiness, quarter to quarter, gold's not for you. But if you don't mind the volatility, you could have 2-3% gold in your portfolio.

Likes the idea of PSA. TLT, he believes, is a leveraged play on the bond market and wouldn't do that. BNS high interest savings, for example, pays 4.75% for optionality and no risk. 

For an ETF filled with 1-year bonds that's very low risk, look at ZST.L. Pays a high dividend, though it's interest. Very competitive rate. If interest rates come down, you might even get a bit of capital appreciation.

He gets to brag, because when he was on the show last month he thought that the tech sector was going to pull back. The general sector is down about 10%. We're probably overdue for a short-term pop on the tech sector, and we're kind of getting that today.

Generally speaking, he expects that the market won't be super-favourable for tech, but not necessarily bearish, until sometime around September. That's based both on seasonal trends and on the presidential cycle. Leading into a presidential election, you tend to get lots of movement in the month or so before.

We have a bit more chop ahead of us, which will be an excellent opportunity. He's been out of tech, but is already looking at starting to leg in at a certain point.

He's been looking at these areas. A lot of that stuff has been so overlooked. He's been holding about 1/4 of his equity platform in cash. What he does hold has been value stuff; for example, he doesn't own BRK anymore. 

His very next blog, being posted shortly, is on the longevity of the NASDAQ. His conclusion, from a longer-term view based on cycles, is that the NASDAQ has more room to go. That includes tech.

In the short term there's probably volatility, and you have to use this as a buying opportunity. But longer term, you'll see upside. 

He looks at very short-term, mid-term, and long-term indicators.

Short-term: stochastics, because it's very whippy. Commodity Channel Index (CCI) is very similar. Choose your favourite. In the mid range, he really likes RSI. For the long term, there's nothing better than MACD. Those are all price momentum.

The other one he recommends people look at is the Money Flow Index. That's the momentum of money flow going into or out of a stock or sector. Really important.

He likes stockcharts.com. They have a free version, which doesn't give you as much of a history. If you're serious about being an at-home investor, you may have to spend a few 100 $$ to be proficient at it and get the basic subscription. Whether free or by subscription, that site gives you access to all the indicators mentioned.

If a stock is 15% above its 200-day moving average, and pushing 20%, it's starting to get overbought. It just means it needs to pull back a bit, it doesn't mean disaster.

Target prices are almost useless:

We know that stock analysts are smart people. Most are brilliant. But they are also salespeople, followers and conservative.

Analysts do not like sticking their necks out, so typical target prices are grouped around a very tight price range. If an analyst is an outlier, they look very bad when they are wrong, so they change their target to be more in line with their peers. This makes them conservative.

They are followers in that, as we are sure you have seen at times, they tend to raise a stock’s target price after some good news or lower the target price after bad news. Essentially, like you and I, they cannot predict the market, so why look at their target prices?

Often, a downgrade in the target price can be a buying signal since it highlights how analysts are fed up with that particular company.
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Confusing times. McDonald's is selling fewer Big Macs, but its shares are rising. Some tech stocks are doing really well, but are selling off. He doesn't know who will be the next great chip supplier of the next 10 years, so he prefers the companies that supply the megatechs.

Not sure if there's a rotation into small caps from large. It's more like the large caps struggling, but will bounce back.

He's agnostic or skeptical about Bitcoin, and prefers investing (some) money into the companies that make Bitcoin possible in a responsible way

Canadian stocks are now outperforming the Nasdaq - even a small rotation is meaningful. There are good long term investor returns from Canadian dividend stocks. The TSX has been held back by financials - and oil stocks too. We have seen Meta and Google start to employ dividends so maybe this type of stock could be the dividend payer of tomorrow. Infrastructure based companies have a long term capital intensive network which is hard to replace. He is excited about Western Canadian natural gas which is really starting to grow. Interest rates are spuriously related to dividend stocks but the real tailwind for them is the growth opportunities which is more important.

The question was on bank stocks. They have come off and he is not really negative or positive on them. He feels there is another shoe to drop from consumers - Canadians will feel the pinch. BMO is the only one of the five big banks that he doesn't own.

Believes upcoming week will be a big week for the markets. Big cap tech reporting, US Fed meeting & US payroll numbers all coming in this week. Will be a lot of data to analyze. Most companies appear to be beating earnings expectations. Larger amount of companies in the markets are generating higher earnings, which is good for the markets. The question is whether economy can sustain growth. US Fed will have to decide on direction of policy given strength in markets. If markets continue to rise - doesn't think that interest rates will fall. 

Lately there is a lot of commentary on broadening of financial markets. Believes strength in the markets is good, but it will take time to tell whether momentum it is sustainable. If stocks continue to rise, US Fed will be in a tough position on what to do with interest rates. Believes it us unlikely that US Fed will cut rates if strength remains. Still continues to believe that markets could see a fall with underlying fragility of US fiscal situation. Would recommend investors are cautious.