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

Concerns about market as a whole? Fundamentally, a green light. Technically, warning signals. Entering a blackout period for buybacks. About 85% of S&P 500 can't buy back, so that takes away some support.

What technical indicators jump out at you? Especially the 50-day moving average. Longest period we've been above the first 5% band, and that's been going on for 2 months now.

Harvesting big data, how do you play that theme? It's massive, and touches on lots of strategic trends. Communications, 5G, data processing. Huge, huge business. 3.8 trillion dollars of spending this year.

They continue to move higher towards all-time highs, but we have a recession obsession with the yield curve. Everybody is twisting this curve to make a point, but it doesn't matter. It means the economy is slowing. Predicting a recession is like driving in a fog--you don't know when you're in it. Perhaps at some point be more defensive and get away from growth and momentum stocks. Also, "sell in May."....USMCA has been a mess (and US-China) with a lot of question marks and dis-information with Trump saying it's going well, when it may not. You can't base a portfolio around this...Semis are an important sector--they underperformed in October which was a sign of the wider market, and since there's been a sharp rally outperforming the market. Semis are a canary in the coalmine, so watch it if it rolls-over, because they could signal a risk-off market.

Gold July-Sept. and end-Dec. to February are gold's seasonal periods. The Chinese are now big consumers of gold, overtaking the Indians. This pattern happened in 2017 and 2018. The next few months are not the time to buy gold. Maybe late-June.

How do you measure relative strength (RSI)? RSI is a mometum indicator that he doesn't use that much, but when he does, he compares RSI to a stock's relative strength to the market.

Market a year from now. Didn't fully understand the dip, but now we're 2% off the highs. Higher probability to see it breakout to the upside, not the downside. Though we may be in a range for a while. The wait just got longer for a 3.5-4% bond. He's been 0 weight in the interest sensitives (REITs, utilities) for a while. The risk on these has been to the upside, so they've tried to avoid that.

Favourite Canadian bank. Hard to choose among them. Tailwind is gone with interest rates not going up. For next nine months will be very resilient. TD dividend is close to 4%, and it's fine to buy, but that's not his favourite right now. See his top picks today. The big 6 have an oligopoly, so he tries never to go down the risk curve on Canadian banks and go outside those 6, he would go global instead.

Market Outlook - The main thing right now is that the US had the best quarter since 2009 in Q1. The US is the only place to be. Europe is still a mess. The whole issue of the inverted yield curve with low interest rates is not so much a problem. Worse case it means just that a recession is likely. Nothing about when, how big, for how long. If you are trying to leap in and out of the market, you are going to get burnt. If you do that, it is because you don't have a strategy to deal with the volatility. He is set on his core positions at the moment with the covered calls on. You never know with Donald Trump but he is very pro-business. The whole Brexit issue is a mess.

General question on Gold in light of the huge global debt - The only thing that gold does now is reflect the strengths or weakness of the US dollar. The US debt is huge but a lot is owned by themselves through different agencies. The gold bugs are waiting for the Apocalypse (and he thinks that they are hoping for it). He hasn't held gold for years. None. It doesn't earn any interest. Gold is a dead horse.

Is there any ETF that protects you on a downtrend? There are the inverse ETF. Just go with the single inverse. Be careful not to go with the leverage inverse. He prefers to buy puts anyways.

What do you think of the Couch Potato investing strategy? He is not thrilled with this. For a small account it is OK. As a portfolio manager you are expected to do a little better.

Market. PMI Numbers were released in China and they were little bit better than expected, but it was due to big builds in inventories as opposed to production for final demand. Everything globally is slowing down, economically. However, the total world ETF, VT-N, is showing we are lower than a year ago even though strong now. We are going nowhere. The Trump tax cuts gave a 'sugar high'. We are looking at a fragile EU economy and all China can do is add to debt. It is only cheap money keeping the economy going. Be prudent. We are going to have a credit problem any time. Britain cannot afford to leave the EU without a deal. They need a balanced soft exit, but there is uncertainty. He thinks they will resolve it and is making big bets on that.

Educational Segment. Educational Segment. Carbon Tax. Pollution and global warming are issues globally. He is bullish on green investing but bearish on carbon tax. He does not think this is the way to make change. If you want to get people to stop driving then you have to double or triple the cost but carbon taxes are not going to work. Transportation is 14% of gas emissions. The agriculture sector is much larger. There is more carbon in the dirt in the ground and as we disturb it, we release it. Clean energy investment does not perform anywhere as well as the total world market.

Market. The lack of rising interest rates in Canada is good for REITs. Real estate companies have been performing quite well because it really comes down to the operations within their business. In the last few years money went into general growth equities to the detriment of RETIs. So any interruption to this expected growth of other equities would be good for REITs. The fund flows into REITs have turned positive. They are pretty fairly valued at this point but he sees no reason for the momentum to slow up. He is holding on and increasing in some cases. REITs have a low correlation to the broader markets.