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

Opportunities. Nothing is cheap. Not many opportunities. Markets are already down 10% on the year. If we saw more jitteriness, he'd be a buyer of the S&P 500. He's been hoping for another pullback of 10-15%, so he can buy good assets cheaply, but that hasn't happened.

Bond ETF for RESP, now or wait? See his Top Picks. He sold all his bond ETFs two years ago, when he sensed liquidity issues in the market. Most bond ETFs' total returns are in negative territory.

US marijuana ETF for 2-3 years? POTX is the largest, and there are a couple of others are out there, but he doesn't recommend them.

Gold. Everyone talks about gold as being a hedge against inflation, but it's not, and hasn't been for quite some time. He doesn't own any gold. Doesn't earn interest. Performance has been lacklustre. Most gold bugs tend to be in the hysterical conspiracy realm. Not an investible asset.

Bond ETF for a steady stream of income? When you're talking about an income fund, quite often the yield is higher than that of the stocks within it. Always question the source of the yield. Also look at the duration of the bond portfolio. You can get this information on any ETF website by looking up "duration". Any medium to longer-term bonds in a rising interest rate environment are going to get clobbered.

US ETF with a good yield for a new investor? You won't find good yield in the US banks, as they're about 1.75%. Try XLF, as it's done well and he'd be buying. If you want to be in USD, this is the place to be. Try ZWK, which is Canadian-listed but deals with the US as a covered call, yield is around 5%. There's also a USD version.

Inexpensive way to play Bitcoin? One ETF is from Purpose Investments, and the other one is from Evolve. He doesn't recommend them. At lot of things about the transactions are uncertain. The US SEC has rejected Bitcoin. The one advantage in Canada is that we deal with spot, or current, prices. Whereas in the US, you can buy it on the futures market, which makes absolutely no sense.

ETF with covered calls and puts? Not aware of one that does both. Look at BMO's ZPW, which writes puts on US stocks.

ETF exposed to Russian oil, low MER and turnover ratio? Russia has a very shallow economy, so he doesn't invest there.

Chinese ETF exposed to all stocks, low MER and turnaround ratio? There are a number of providers, but the one with the greatest following seems to be KraneShares. They have numerous ones, so you're sure to find one that's satisfactory. The MER will be at least 85 bps, since it's always higher when it's foreign. Not sure about the turnaround ratio.

Proxy for a bond ETF in an RRSP? Once you get liquidity issues, ie. no buyers, the price of bonds can drop really fast. So he sold his long bond ETFs. Instead, he bought ZEB as a bond substitute, which holds all 6 Canadian banks. Its MER used to be too high for him, but they recently chopped it to 25 bps, so he bought. But see his Top Picks for a bond ETF.

Using a stop-loss. He tends not to use them, as you can get a surprise. If you put a stop loss on, without a limit, you can end up dumping your portfolio when you didn't really want to do that.

No Berman's Call due to statutory holiday.

The big picture is the sway that options trading has over this market. The 2 days, day before and day of options expiration sees jarring market moves. It happens every week during this earning season. Company fundamentals aren't important in comparison. That's why we're not out of this bear market yet. A stock can fall 30% or 50% from its peak, but nothing fundamental has changed with the company or stock.