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

Inflation is dipping lower, but also economic activity. This will lead to negative GDP growth rates by year's end, which could signal the start of a recession.

This decline in natural gas prices (hitting lows today) is good to fight inflation, even short term.

Believes 1) "peak/troughs" & 2) "past 200 days" are simplest way to look at markets.
All major indexes are pointing to upwards trend.
Believes caution warranted in markets as future uncertain.
Need to see break through on indexes before will start investing again.
Is waiting for upcoming actions of US Fed.
Expecting pain for the consumer with rising interest rates.

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He remains bullish, but isn't putting much stock into today's rally. The real test will come with inflation and employment data in the coming two weeks.

We won't return to 3,200 (his former target), but there will be rallies as well as more volatility. He has few regrets of what he has sold. We're in a bear market rally.

Would advise investors to keep equity portfolios well balanced given underlying strength of economy. 
A 60/40 portfolio with fixed income/equities will do investors well.
High interest products are paying nice returns for defensive names. 
High quality dividend stock are offering great opportunities. 
Opportunity can be found in low priced tech stocks. 

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Hard to tell on a quarterly basis. As a general rule, they're in very good shape. Even though loan losses have continued to rise, that's a good thing because they can take them back into earnings when things aren't as bad as forecast. Lots of capital to increase dividends or buy back shares, not trading at extreme levels on book value. In his dividend portfolio, he owns TD, RY, CM, and BNS. These are great businesses over the long term. A lot of the quarters had one-off costs. Great things to buy and hold long term. They continue to make money.

Weird economic background. Coming out of Covid, we had lots of fiscal stimulus, and now part of that's falling off. Then we had massive monetary policy decreasing rates, and there's a long lag in that effect, which we haven't felt yet. Consumers have had lots of savings, and unemployment is not very high. They're not in as bad a shape as people think. Remember, we came out of a very difficult 2 years, and now people are making up for that. You're seeing inflation numbers really high on the services side, as people just want to live their lives again, and this number is what the Fed's trying to bring down. US consumers with mostly fixed mortgages aren't as sensitive to higher mortgage rates as they were in 2008 when most had adjustable-rate mortgages.

Canadian consumers appear to be in a much more difficult situation.

Hasn't really come to fruition yet, and that will be important for a lot of the telecom companies. If you're in an elevator or underground parking, you still can't get your phone to work. Once 5G gets to a critical level, all these companies will do much better. 

Problem with all these companies is that they increased costs because of Covid to an unreasonable level. They had to upgrade so quickly, and they just don't need those people anymore. Now there's a normalization of the economy and businesses, and so they have to get rid of people. All the layoffs have been tech-related.

Question is whether we've had a jackrabbit start, or is it a dead cat? Stocks that were off the hardest in 2022 have rebounded the most early this year, largely because you had the exaggerated effect of tax-loss selling in December.