He used to own it personally, but not for their clients. Cigarettes are the most profitable business in the world because customers are relatively price insensitive. They produce a product that is addictive for the customers, which makes for a great company and a great industry. Problem now though is that tobacco usage is falling off faster than people expected. It’s still early in the game for e-cigarettes but they aren’t coming up as successfully as expected. Consumers products stocks are underperforming, they were great until interests rates started going up. He sold his holding.

One of the most disappointing stock in the U,S market. Has gone from a market leader to a marker lagger to say the least. New CEO is reevaluating every businesses and selling of or joint venturing. That’s going to take some time. He caught the dividend which people didn’t like. Stocks seems to have reached a bottom now. He thinks its a safe stock to buy for longer term value investors.

(A Top Pick June 16/17, Up 24%) Quite happy, still owns it and keeps buying for clients.The biggest industrial maker of pumps. They’ve increased their dividends for 42-43 years. Nobody cared about their products but now are drawing more attention. A play on water as well, which is a market they like.

(A Top Pick June 16/17, Up 2% ) Sold it early April. This was a growth company until recently, but since the financial crisis has done very little and not much to improve shareholder values. Management is competent but nothing special. The Desmarais sons haven’t proven themselves and haven’t done as well as their father and they still have a lot of influence in the company.

(A Top Pick June 16/17, Up 12% ) Likes pharma and owns a couple of them. The time to buy is when they are facing a patent clift, and their biggest drugs are coming off-patents and the company has to find new drugs or buy other promising companies. Pfizer was one of those when they bought Wyeth. They have a big consumer products division, which provides lots of cash flow, good earnings but not huge growth, which they put up for sell recently but couldn’t really find a buyer. Still likes it longer term.

Owns it. Has been a great stock for them for many years, had some issues more recently. Had some issues because they couldn’t get Northern Gateway to pass. They own pipelines, gas utilities, wind farms, etc. which gives a guaranteed rate of returns, but you need to grow, so they wanted to do Northern Gateway but that was taken away from them. Now in the process of replacing Old line 3 going through the U.S., hopefully that will go through. But most recently bought Spectra Energy and probably took on too much debt to do that. Thinks its over sold now and will see some recovery. Not going to make a lot of money with pipelines and utilities while the interest rates go up.

Currently doesn’t own any REIT. Owned Riocan and sold a little while ago. It’s still largely retail and that’s been under pressure lately. The main problems with REIT is rising interest rates. If you’re going to own a REIT you’re better to look for one that has a lot of growth and not the yield.