Market. The big moves in the last couple of years in ETFs has been from passive investing styles to more active styles like ESG, Active ETFs, or long/short strategies. The Corona Virus: If you look at SARS and the market declines in 2002/2003 it was a different point than where we are now. They had a lot of market pessimism but now we are at all time highs in most places. It should be a much different impact. It will have a dent on GDP in China. Impeachment: There is a lot that is NOT priced into markets at this time. Interest Rates: The FED is not going to increase interest rates.

Gold Bullion, ETF or Trust - which is the best to buy. You could mix silver into it because you get more upside traction. He is almost indifferent. It is about market liquidity to him so GLD-Q is the best one.

When and how much of defensive positions do you re-deploy? When you deploy large sums of capital do you invest all at once? He recommends always scaling in gradually. It mostly has to do with your tolerance for risk as to when and how much you re-deploy defensive holdings.

Gold. It looks like we have the setup for a breakout in Gold. He is still bullish. Don't trim but he is not adding right now.

Educational Segment. ETF Conference in Florida. Inside ETFs 2020. There is the shift from passive investing to more active approaches. This year they awarded BTAL-N as ETF of the year. It has been around since 2011. It is market neutral. It is a long/short strategy. The long stocks pay higher than the short stocks. It has negative reactions to the markets. ZBTL-T is a Canadian ETF and ZPAY-T can both be combined with BTAL-US.

Cost difference compared to unhedged and where is cost of hedging shown. You don’t know ahead of time what the hedging cost is. The cost could be a plus to your returns. It shows up as a tacking error to the underlying index. We are way too early to say today's dip is an opportunity to jump in.

Market. The impeachment trial starts this week and he thinks the markets are too heavily discounting a negative outcome. They are trying to paint Trump's issues here as not violating the constitution. The surprise here is that Trump gets impeached. He is expecting volatility because the market is expecting this to be a non-issue. From a simplistic perspective there are a couple of ways we can predict things going from here. The trend line started up at the beginning of 2019 and now is at the top of the channel. We don't know what's coming but when it comes, be prepared for a melt up. After about another month it could be another period of extreme volatility.

Dollar cost averaging. Buy the total world through ETFs. If you want a higher yield and better capital preservation, you might go with Balanced ETFs. There are lots of low cost versions but there really are none protection from low interest rates. There is no one-stop solution so look at an active ETF that focuses on capital preservation. There is not one ETF that ticks all the boxes.

His preference is to, rather than going into one particular name, he would go to a REIT ETF. There are several equal weight ETFs that do this. Get a basket of real estate trusts.

Copper. He is much more for diversification. COPX-T is all the copper miners. It is one of the primary things. Looking back 10 years he wonders why you would own this. He does not think this is a now an early play but it does have cyclicality. He would not like this sector long term. You might be able to trade this short term.

He worked there for 6 months at age 18 in plumbing. It has been a very good story recently and a good dividend payer. The growth side of this story is behind us. It has peaked out into strength for three years now. He would prefer to own it close to the lows. No more than half a position.

The CAD$ is closer to the upper end of the range. He is about a market weight position for US$ (about 53% exposure). The CAD$ could drift a little higher here and then he would want to add to exposure.

He was bullish 20 years ago and it has ever manufactured itself. You go through periods like this where you get excitement. The world is serious about alternatives and batteries. There is no new news and so it could be pure momentum. He does not know where it is going. Be cautious about trading it here. Execution is measured in decades.

Energy is a big part of the Canadian story. The world is serious about climate change. We need balance in the transition away from fossil fuels and limiting pipeline capacity is one of the most idiotic way of doing this.

Educational Segment. Natural Gas. With nothing trading on the cheap he is always looking for relative value. He has seen the gas sector show up. The carbon footprint of natural gas is half that of coal. There is an opportunity for us to replace a lot of coal with natural gas. LNG will let us transport it around the world. UNG-T trades the commodity and the problem is the forward contracts and volatility. From 2000 to now it has declined from $2000 to $20. It is the front month futures contract. He would look for natural gas over the traditional energy guys.

Market. He is saying 'Show me the money!' We have now gone a year without any real earnings growth and there is now expectation for earnings to grow high single digits. When you have a year with absolutely no earnings growth and the markets are up 30% you have to ask how much earnings growth the markets have already priced in. You want to see earnings growth that is unaffected by share buy backs and so on, but he does not think we will see that. You want to watch out for investors fearing missing out and then chasing the market here. There is anticipation of the signing of a US/China trade deal and he thinks it will be pomp and circumstance without out a lot of substance. There were not the escalation of tariffs in December but there was not the roll back. The tariff rate is 16% and that is not a good thing. He thinks there is no phase II coming. The trade balance is the only thing that matters.

A concentrated portfolio is something between 15 and 25 stocks as opposed to the broad index such as the TSX 60 or the S&P 500. It is active management and concentrated. Typically you get a lot more volatility. Remarkably they have done a great job of outperforming while keeping volatility down. They left out energy and have done a little bit better than if you took energy out of the S&P. So he likes it and it seems to be a good strategy so far. But remember that they are not into capital preservation so if the market goes down, it is liable to also do so.

[As sole holding]. It is a yield focused balanced fund made up of a bunch of ETFs that are more yield-centric. The only criticism is that there is probably too much exposure to Canada. When it is in a registered account then you don’t get the benefit of the dividend tax credit. Making it the only holding in an account there is 'manager risk' and perhaps there is too much concentration in Canada if it is in a registered account. Otherwise it is not a bad idea.

He loves the dividend and the strategy. He is the biggest holder of this fund by a long shot. Around $14 he finds he does not love it for capital growth. If we get a pull back then he would go for it.

Taiwan ETF. It is an interesting play from a geopolitical perspective. But you have to worry about the top holding being 24% and a lot of the run-up is about this semiconductor company. Wait for the next market correction of 10% or more before stepping in.

He has said for a couple of years that he wants the industry to mature. He thinks there is some value there at this point. There are really no earnings, however. Usually when a correction hits, stocks without earnings get hit first. He has been buying below $9. Don't commit a lot of money. Just nibble.

China equity ETF. There is not likely to be any escalation in trade risk between China and US. Trump is not going to escalate, but there will be no progress either. China has massive growth problems. The population will peak in the next 5 to 10 years according to the world bank. Their natural growth is held at 2%. There is a big headwind in China and he would not add to it except in pull backs. He prefers the 'A' shares market in the US for China exposure. This is not a no-brainer play.

Educational Segment. The markets are expensive by many metrics but cheap by some others. He presented a table of current vs. historical valuation models of some indicators. He looked at price to sales. The last peak was in the late '90s and we are back there. He looked at Enterprise value to EBITDA and we are also at a peak just above the late 90's peak. We are creating a massive bubble and this is not the time to get excited about stocks. Be conservative. The market may not top for another two years.

Market. Geopolitical risk was as high as it has ever been prior to this most recent event. That even creates uncertainty but it is not a reason to buy stocks on dips. We are in a political world and Trump elevates that. Will he make a choice to do something that would keep the impeachment out of the headlines. People may be discounting this event too much and it may become more of an event than people think. In the US it is show me the money time and unless there is meaningful growth in earnings, then there is no reason to buy the dips. Interest rates are low but it does not make stocks a bullish bet. Gold has received a big lift. See his Educational Segment. If we can break out from these resistance points it could mean $1800 or $1900. The US/China trade we should get a signatory event but we should not get a phase II this year and maybe with a different leading in the US. He thinks Trump will not win the election.

Shorting Corporate Bonds – An ETF Recommendation? The riskiest part of the market is the high yield market. SJB-N is the riskiest of the corporate high yield bonds – junk bonds. The challenge is that you have to pay the yield when you are short – about 5% on average. It is expensive to be short high yield.

Sleep at Night Portfolio – If Larry retires, is it safe? If the market went bear, his portfolios would not go down. When the markets are at a high point and don’t look good, his fund goes down but not as much as the market. When he retires, there will be a strong team in place to replace him. His intelligence is being taken into an artificial intelligence process.

CNQ-T vs. SU-T. He thinks we are at the point where we have peak demand for carbon-based energy. By 2025 every car manufacturer will at least have a hybrid. There will always be at last a little demand for carbon-based energy. Right now we are generating more energy from solar than from coal, so we are moving in the right direction. He is indifferent to the two stocks.

CNQ-T vs. SU-T. He thinks we are at the point where we have peak demand for carbon-based energy. By 2025 every car manufacturer will at least have a hybrid. There will always be at last a little demand for carbon-based energy. Right now we are generating more energy from solar than from coal, so we are moving in the right direction. He is indifferent to the two stocks.

He loves great dividend paying companies. You have to think about after tax. In cash accounts you want to overweight Canada but think much more international in retirement accounts. The question is when a 30-50% correction is coming. Don't sell when you should be buying. He rather reinvests in the ETF on dips rather than using a Drip.

It is a US pipeline play. He thinks it will be in a trading range for several years. It is at the bottom of a trading range right now with a great distribution yield, so that is how he is playing it. He still likes it and owns it and bought a little more on tax loss selling.

Inversion of interest rate curve and does that now reduce recession risk. When the FED starts to cut rates that will uninvert the rate curve. If we were worried about recession then long rates would be skyrocketing and they are not. They are relatively contained. It speaks to economic weakness. The economy is not going to be rip-roaring strong here.

Educational Segment. When he is building portfolios, he is looking for assets that are uncorrelated so he can reduce risk. This is the most important thing if you are taking the sleep-at-night approach. Gold still stands out to him as one of the best asset classes of 2020. He thinks gold still has some upside potential. Monetary policy has not worked well in driving economic growth so it will shift to fiscal policy which will demand that more quantitative easing will have to occur. Jewelry demand is an offset to demand. ETF (investor) demand and central bank demand for gold are the two main points. Investor holdings are the biggest demand for gold. We are back to the level of 2012. That was sparked by QE2 and now we are back to that resistance. If we break through that, there is no resistance to above $1800. He loves the asset class here. Equities give you a 2:1 upside to the commodity price.

Market. Brexit. It looks like a conservative majority but that does not solve Brexit. There is still a lot of runway, but this is a hurtle for the market and a conservative win would benefit the markets. There will be a Brexit, well negotiated. The British pound has responded. He is still contemplating selling his UK small cap stocks prior to the election or slightly after. A week Sunday if the December 15th tariff day. He would be surprised if Trump did not kick it down the road at this point, but the tariffs could be applied.

Park money for 3 to 4 months. This is always a challenge. The general idea is that one is not getting enough safe return. If your horizon is 3-4 months, then you can't get into equities. There are high income savings ETFs that have emerged. CSAV, PSA and HISA. They focus on high income savings. You get over 2% interest today. ZST gives you a money market kind of holding.

Put Spread. You buy a put and write a put. You reduce the cost of the downside protection. He would look at doing this. A long put offsets a short put.

US security ETFs clearing in New York or in Toronto yet securities may not be located in the city it trades in. You can buy them in both places and it may impact tax consequences.

In the last 10 years US markets have lead the world recovery. We are at that point where the US is so expensive relative to other places in the world that we will start to see conversion to the US doing less well and international markets doing a bit better.

He has a problem recommending ETFs with leverage in them to an average investor.

His favourite way to play international markets is via a covered call, high divined stock strategy.

Educational Segment. Looking back on the last year. He thought we would get a bear market over this year but it was a brief but deep pull back last December. He said then and still thinks we will not see it in terms of job losses until well into 2020. He said then, and still believes, that the trend of a declining Canadian dollar will continue into 2020 somewhere below $0.70. The Canadian banks may not correct until well into next year. He thinks interest rates will be lower in a year than they are today.