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Thinks there is a lot more to the story. There is an activist investor now and we’ve never really had activist investors until just a while ago. He applauds activist investor that comes in and wants a seat on the board and wants to see the share price going higher. This creates a bit of a fire under stock prices. The company has a nickel mine in Madagascar and are anticipating by year-end that the mine will be up to 90%. Earnings on this company is at about $0.30 and next years earnings estimates are somewhere near $1. Stock has great momentum.

Best Canadian bank? The one that came out with the best earnings in the last quarter was CIBC (CM-T) and they were the only ones that did a share buyback. However, if you are looking at banks, there is much better value if you look at US banks.

Prefers Exchange Traded Funds because they are not as risky as picking individual securities. Likes US banks and think they have more value than Canadian banks. Feels the US consumer has deleveraged and is going to go back to the bank and borrow money. He would prefer the BMO Equal Weight US Banks Hedged (ZUB-T) ETF.

Likes this one. Looking at upcoming trends in the marketplace, you have to look at infrastructure. Federal government has kicked in $14 billion for infrastructure, provinces have kicked in billions as well, and all we have to do is drive around and see how our infrastructure is just falling apart. Has a little bit of issue with the backlog, which is not as strong as he would like to see. (See Top Picks.)

Not a good investment. This is large-cap gold companies, so you are going to get the movement of those companies and you are going to get a dividend and a covered call premium attached to that. Right now you are getting a yield of about 13%. In the past 12 months, it was trading at around the $9 mark and is now at around $6. Yielding about 8% a year ago. Has no idea where gold is going to go.

If we are cautious on the marketplace, dividends are all very, very important. Looking back on any portfolio, you will find the dividend has made up a good portion of the rate of return. This is a really good dividend ETF.

RESP. ETF for a 1-2 year period? This would eliminate any equity because that is a pretty short time period. iShares Diversified Monthly (XTR-T) is about a 5.9% yield. This is a basket of iShares ETFs.

This is a whole mix of entertainment and leisure type companies. If we are considering an economic recovery, then consumer discretionary stocks should do very well. This ETF is composed of hotels, restaurants, cruise lines, gaming houses. Has about 30 companies and they are all rebalanced quarterly. They are looked at by management actions, price momentum, earnings momentum and a number of value criteria.

A global infrastructure ETF. Looking at $14 billion in infrastructure spending by the federal government, more by the provincials and in the US we have the P3’s. Thinks the trend of infrastructure is going to be not only in North America, but expects it to be worldwide.

Looking at hedge funds in the US, every 3 months they have to submit their portfolios to the SEC. This small cap ETF buys companies that hedge funds own. If a hedge fund has a high turnover rate, it is not included.

Markets. There is continuing evidence of a very strong underlying demand for equity ownership underneath the surface. Every pullback we’ve had in the last 12 months has been relatively shallow and relatively short-lived. He feels there is under-ownership in equities. Valuations are reasonable, especially against the backdrop of interest rates. Interest rates do not look like they are set to move dramatically anytime soon, so the extra return you can get buying equities, versus yields on the 10 year bond, are very attractive. Ultimately we know that private investors and pension funds under-own equities as a percent of their total values. Over a long period of time, at the bottom of secular bear markets you tend to get down to 15%-20% equity ownership as a percentage of net worth, at the household level. In each of the last long-term 20 year secular bull markets, by the end private investors were close to 30% equity exposed. Today they are sitting somewhere around 18%-19%. He is mostly equity focused, focused on dividends and specifically dividend growth with companies that are paying out little of their earnings but where they are showing a willingness to increase that. The risk is enough of a slow down in emerging markets that they wind up with credit problems or their currencies come off enough.

One of the big reasons investors have been focused on energy infrastructure is because of this boom in production that has been going on in North America. You have to move all the stuff around so many of the infrastructure companies have had a great opportunity to invest in new infrastructure and get great returns on capital. This company is seeing a slowing in their revenues and has not as quite an attractive profile as some of the other companies. He would prefer something like Williams Companies (WMB-N) which is also a pipelines, midstream and energy infrastructure and have raised a lot of equity in 2011-2012 to build up new projects which come into production and fruition in 2013, 2014 and 2015. They will also have close to 20% dividend growth per year for the next 5 years and will get 25%-26% earnings growth.

A company that builds infrastructure for telecoms. They manage build outs of towers and gear. They also do fibre to the home where there is a lot of money being spent building bandwidth. Have also found their way into oil/gas service.

Bought this because this was a fragmented industry that has been consolidated down to 3 players. Historically pricing for D-RAM was quite volatile but there is a lot of pricing discipline now in the market. If there is more pricing discipline and less big new supply, then you could get a higher earnings multiple paid for the shares.

3-D printing is in very early stage. There is a very large potential market out there for 3-D companies. These companies are going to go through lots of flips and twists so this is not necessarily for the conservative investor. There has been a very good pullback in these companies. If he had to pick one company, it would probably be Stratasys (SSYS-Q), which is holding a little bit better than the rest. He likes industrials as a group, but understand this is going to be a higher volatility position. Use Stops.