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

Markets. They’ve been brutal since the beginning of January. Earnings on the S&P 500 companies have been down 4% on a year-to-year basis. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we have just completed a volatility spike. Historically, when you get a spike in VIX-N, once it is over it sets the stage for markets to move significantly higher. The TSX Composite since Jan 21 is already up 7%, so we are already starting to move to the upside. Seasonality is positive right through until the beginning of May for both Canada and the US. In the last 2 weeks, markets have been choppy, but have been forming a nice little base. Today we had a very, very strong bounce from some very critical levels technically. So the stage is set for US and Canadian equity markets to significantly go higher until May.

Canadian $. This has a period of seasonal strength from the beginning of March through until the end of April. This coincides with the strength in oil and an improving industrial production. The bad news is that technically we are in a long downward trend. There are some early signs of bottoming which is fairly encouraging. You want to see more confirmation that it has actually reached its low.

Energy. The energy sector is set up for a major move during the next few months. The period of seasonal strength is from the 3^rd week in January right through until May of each year. We are already seeing technical signs that the Canadian energy sector is in gear already. Forming a nice little base pattern and about to take another move on the upside.

Markets. Gold. It is not a great sign when you see people moving into a safe haven. It is the first time we have seen it since 2008. Investors have exhausted all places to put money: Bonds are volatile, equities are volatile and you don’t earn much in cash. Be selective in oil. He has been negative in oil for 4 years. Even now, he sees we are close to the bottom in oil prices, but you don’t want to falsely translate oil price stability into share price stability in oil stocks. He is not a buyer in the oil space. 2016 is another year of pain, with even more. A hand full of oil companies have hedges coming off. They have been burning cash hoping oil prices will come back.

Weighting – banks and financials. If you assign a 10% weighting, then the subsectors should be included in that. If you add to subsectors then you add to the space. You might differ between Canadian and US, but otherwise both banks and insurance companies are financials.

Negative interest rates in Canada. We are quite a ways from banks charging to take your money. Negative interest rates are more of a term. He believes Canada is going into a recession. He expects interest rates to go to zero. You will not be earning a net positive rate after inflation. This will continue as Canada’s economy struggles.

Do I go back into the market from cash? There is always a risk going to cash, but when you get it right it feels good. Try to build a portfolio you can live with in tough times. Remind yourself that going to cash is a strategy that is not sustainable according to history. Buy now if you are all in cash. He is at 25% right now. Make sure they are dividend paying names. Don’t make any big bets on sectors or individual names.

Markets. It is very difficult to figure out exactly when all this stuff stops. There are a lot of things happening that are driving the stock market including a disbelief that the US is probably going to put off rate increases for quite a while. China is slowing down with a lot of talk about further devaluation of their currency. Inflationary expectations have been going down in the last little while, not only in the US, but in Europe as well. There is a real worry in the world that monetary policy cannot do the things it was supposed to do. Thinks the argument is valid that monetary policy has to be mixed with fiscal policy. We are looking for this to be happening in Canada in the next little while, and we need to see it in other parts of the world as well, such as US, Europe, UK, etc.

Energy. We have seen hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts in CapX spending in the industry. Feels the time for buying energy is probably coming quite soon. It is time for people to get interested in energy, because all the CapX cuts are going to impact production growth in the future, which is where the real opportunity lies. OPEC produces 2 million a day more than they were when all this started. Part of the problem has been OPEC itself, but also we have not had the kind of production we expected from the US, but that is coming. It has a lag time. When we saw the production cap happening in the US, a lot of it came with efficiency gains because of production cuts, and she doesn’t see that for this year, and this year the cuts are really going to impact. There could be a surprise to the upside because of how crude trades on this kind of behaviour. One caveat is that demand is going to be pretty decent this year, but there have been reports out that demand might slow down growth. However, thinks the oil sands is going to be challenged.

Markets. Things people are worrying about are not new problems for the most part. Markets for the last 5-6 years are advancing in spite of major issues percolating underneath the surface. The problems really never went away and as valuations continue to appreciate, and as some of the problems became more acute, it has given people pause to think about their positions. A common lore is that demand for oil is falling, and falling oil prices have been a symptom of weak global demand. However, demand for oil last year was the strongest it has been in 5 years. The problem is we have too much oil. This is an example of people focusing on what is an easy answer. Another one is the focus on China. China is decelerating its economic activity and is going through a transition, and people are worried about the devaluation of the Renminbi and what it is going to do to global markets and that we are going to have a currency war. We are already having a currency war and we are all pushing China to make their economy more open. The Chinese currency has appreciated, as has the US currency, for many, many years now. Now the currency is going down a little and people are criticizing them. Nobody pays attention to the fact that every country is in a competitive devaluation situation, which is very deflationary and is causing major problems to the US economy. Investors are only now starting to pay attention that the strong US$ has become a major headwind to US multinational corporate profits. He carries a very heavy cash position, just under 30%. The big new problem: are European banks spiraling out of control? He has been watching credit spreads widening globally for quite some time. Partially that is a function of the structure of the credit markets where a lot of high-yield bonds are held in ETF’s. The illusion exists that you can get instant liquidity. But the ETF has to sell the underlying security. With the new regulatory environment in the States and Europe, banks are less inclined to become liquidity providers in bond markets, so they have to find fewer and fewer buyers, and the major buyers of ETF’s are now in liquidation mode taking things down to valuations that compel people to purchase them. He is finally starting to see pretty good value in securities, particularly in the US. With credit spreads widening in Europe, etc., that stuff starts to begin morphing and becomes problematic.

Canadian negative interest rate environment? Canada could certainly go into a negative interest rate environment. Last year there were a lot of analysts that were suggesting banks should be bought because the yield curve was going to steepen as the Fed raised interest rates. It has done exactly the opposite. Negative interest rates are a tax on banks at a time when banks are already struggling with other kinds of problems. He doesn’t think negative interest rates will cause banks to cut their rates. They are well capitalized, strong and quite capable of dealing with an increase in nonperforming loans. However, he does think Canadian banks have been feasting on selling Canadian investors a debt for a good long time.

Markets. This is going to be a challenging year for investors. It has been much more pronounced than people expected. Feels we are now getting to the point where lower oil prices are sparking concerns about credit. A lot of people are looking at the banks, their balance sheets and exposure to oil companies as well as debt maturities coming up for renewal this year and next, and how many companies are going to be going concerns. You are seeing this with Canadian, US and European banks, so you have credit concerns. Over and above that you have global growth concerns, so people are starting to fret about China in 2016-2017 as they go through the transitionary period with their economy. People are making bets against the Chinese Renminbi, and are going short the currency, because they suspect further devaluation is necessary to stabilize economic growth. Then there is some uncertainty about growth in the euro zone and Japan and what the ECB is going to do at their coming meeting in March. All those global growth concerns, low commodity prices, currency depreciation are really contributing to the economic market volatility. Thinks we are going to see the US Fed take a more dovish stance. While most people were expecting 4 rate hikes at the end of 2015 and 2016, now we will be lucky if we get one, if that. If the US Fed backs off, it could be a bit of a rallying cry for equities and maybe a reset of inflation expectations, which is why you are probably seeing the US$ fall back.

Markets. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty as to what is happening with the impact of energy and fears that we are heading into a global recession. Certain regions are overly dependent on energy which has hurt their economy, and Canada is one of them. US doesn’t have energy as that important of a role. Manufacturing has been quite weak, even in the US. Some CEOs have said we are in an industrial recession. However, for the US economy, the US consumer is much more important, as their economy comes for 85% of GDP. The US consumer is in a very good situation. There were very strong job numbers last week, even though they were below consensus numbers. Unemployment is at an all-time low below 5%. The non-manufacturing Index is still expanding, so she thinks that the US economy will grow at a modest pace this year.

Markets. You are better to put money in the market when the market is down 1.57% (a statistically calculated amount), such as on a day like today. He thinks the Fed will suggest they won’t increase interest rates in March. If we are going into a moderate recession, the US market is not down, even if the rest of the world is. At some point this year we might see the S&P at the 16-17 hundred level. The S&P could go up 10%, or it could lose. This earnings season is far better than expected. The top line growth, however, has been declining for a year, plus. Best case scenario the market goes sideways, but there will be trading opportunities.

What ETF for Canadian TSX exposure. ZCN-T is the entire Canadian TSX. XIC-T is the entire TSX and VCE-T is the MSCI Canada version of the index.