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

You have to be careful. Very rarely are there Sell positions on them. You have to look at a company and decide if you like it, perhaps using analyst ratings to help you make that decision. There can be other vested interests in those ratings. So don't rely on them too much.

He can't :)  The reason is that he's not a big fan of the preferred share market. You take all the risk of an equity market, yet funds often trade at a discount to NAV. That market hasn't been super-kind to investors.

For income he'd rather own a pure dividend play, through either individual stocks or an ETF. If you want enhanced income, look at some of the covered call ETFs.

Frankly, the bond market's been tough. Some things that traditionally were supposed to drive the bond market higher haven't really worked as well as expected. Right now there's a disconnect between using bonds to diversify and the income generated from them. With interest rates having come down, he'd have expected better performance.

Instead, try looking for alternative income sources to see if there's a better play out there than just a traditional bond fund.

Like last year, 2026 is volatile. Some big companies are up or down 15%. January looks like markets were up 0.5%, but the real story is that there was lots of speculation and whipsawing. You have to be a long-term investor. The market valuation is a little higher than average, nothing terrible. There are companies worth buying now for the long term. Sectors he's picking away at: financials, real estate and industrials. In tech, he's holding onto Meta and Alphabet.

The narrative to explain all that points to the potential appointee (Kevin Warsh) to The Fed, and we'll have to see if he gets confirmed. People are trying to figure out what his regime would look like. Is he going to focus on inflation, or is he going to cut interest rates like crazy to satisfy the US administration?

If he focuses on inflation, that might be good for the USD but bad for gold and bitcoin. Things change so quickly, you can't draw a blanket conclusion and apply it to a Fed appointee over the next number of years.

For sure. Of course, macro's always on our minds. Macro stuff will come and go. In the short term he doesn't care what anyone's predictions for gold or interest rates or inflation are. Most people are wrong anyway.

He always tells clients that you have to figure out what type of investor you are. At his firm they're long-term, Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch-style investors. Focus on owning great-quality companies that offer some reasonable certainty that they'll be selling more of a product or service in the next 3-5 years.

There have been huge reactions to lots of stocks where there's been no impact on earnings, but the narrative is driving the story. The market's forgetting the most important thing when it comes to investing -- it's the mathematics of future cashflows. For example, MSFT reported last week with no indication of software being disrupted, yet the stock sank. 

When stocks report earnings, you never know what the reaction is going to be. He's going to keep focusing on company results. Not conjecture, not what someone says on X.

Fact is, we should feel pretty good about markets heading into 2026. Corporate earnings are extremely strong, with another year of probably double-digit earnings growth. Interest rates have come down a lot. Inflation seems to be pretty tame. What more do you want?

There's an advantage to owning companies that have already built up billions of customers, such as AAPL, MSFT, V, or AMZN. Especially when they have such strong goodwill from customers, and they keep adding products and services. 

In this day and age we don't know what's going on with AI, and the consumer's really frightened about how the world's going to look. You want to stick with companies that have the best brands, best distribution, and best marketing that you can trust.

He expected the gold correction, and the downside could last months or years. In 2011 or 2012, gold peaked at $1,900 and it took more than a decade to return to those highs. Gold could go higher, but it could easily correct again. Gold's 200-day moving average is around $3,700 now, and we'll probably test that. Don't buy today, but wait.  He doesn't expect to return to the highs for a while. Kevin Warsh was probably the best choice as new US Fed Chair, and the market felt some relief with that choice though have we solved the US debt issue? His historic views have been critical of the Fed, but he expects these to come. Among this week's earnings, he's watching Google and Amazon and what they will say. What Microsoft earlier said about the cloud and Azure is partly why MSFT shares are down. If Amazon said the same thing, that could trouble the broader markets. Tesla is an example of shareholders punishing a company for not saying what they want to hear (phasing out some EV car models and focusing more on self-driving cars).

Great question that applies to probably 50% of the show's viewers. Regulators won't allow him to answer the question, but he strongly suggests hiring a professional advisor.

He likes private credit funds which are better than Canadian total return ETFs. These funds pay dividend yield of 6-8%, while some target 10-12%, but there are risks. Go to CAIA to see the risk breakdown: 0-6% can be multi-strategy funds, convertible arbitrage, long-short credit, global macros; 6-11% event-driven, CTA/futures; 11-16% emerging markets; over 16% digital assets. These are illiquid, so you may not get your money out quickly. If you don't need money ready, then consider these funds.

The S&P remains in a secular bull market with more momentum to come--the 13-, 26- and 40-week moving averages are moving up. Former resistance of $6,920 is now a support level. If it can't hold that, then $6,845 is the next level of support. She would buy at that level. She's worry if it fell to last October's low of $6,550. In the S&P equal weight chart, the  the 13-, 26- and 40-week moving averages are moving up ever higher than the non-EW chart. Again, this chart has broken above the last resistance ($7.896) to become the new support. The rally has broadened nicely, away from megacaps. He thinks it's good that the rally is broadening, but because of weakness in the Bitcoin chart, we won't see a repeat of 2025's strong gains.

No new show today. Repeat broadcast from yesterday.

We started 2026 with an almost-Goldilocks approach. Yesterday, both the BOC and The Fed indicated they were happy with where rates were in the short term. Thinks the trend is lower, which would be supportive of markets. It's kind of wait and see.

In his portfolios, he's been adopting a sit-on-his-hands approach. Yesterday the S&P 500 touched all-time highs. Volatility in general is low, but today we're seeing a bit of a spike. He's keeping his portfolios in line and looking to add some positions here and there.