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An ugly chart, long out of favour, at 2013-14 levels. The risk is to the upside. The first stop is $95. Also, there's no reason tobaccp companies can't get into cannabis. (Analysts' price target: $93.58)

Plenty of upside as we approach NAFTA talks and a resolution. Otherwise, it's cheap name. The firs stop is $65 to the upside. Any hopeful NAFTA news will lift this. (Analysts' price target: $79.06)

(Past Top Pick, June 25, 2018, Up 5%) Disappointed it didn't reach the $50's by now, given how the U.S. economy is doing. It should be moving up.

(Past Top Pick, June 25, 2018, Down 11%) A real disappointment. He's throwing in the towel. They make cars in India.

What is Market-Neutral Investing? A market-neutral find tries to be effectively short as much as it is long. He has about $400 million assets under administration, with roughly $200 short and $200 long.

Market. He has no inside insight about the NAFTA negotiations but suspects that they will take a little while (longer than the week currently being talked about). This has been a hot topic since Trump was elected and so, he thinks, investors have already positioned themselves in terms of this risk. Therefore, he is focused on the fundamentals and risks of individual companies rather than on the macro developments. The investment theme that is currently most interesting to him is the interest rate-hiking cycle. Short rates are up, not just in Canada. This usually has a lagging impact. The last rate-hiking cycle was in 2007. Other similarities to 2007 are the yield curve and the level of M&A activity (the market is blowing past the 2007 level of M&A). M&A has involved several trillion dollars this year, which makes shorting individual companies very challenging, but he thinks that shorting is likely to pay off on a go-forward basis. He has been doing well with a merger arbitrage strategy.

He’s bullish on it. It took a big hit on its first quarterly announcement. The second quarter was fine. The problem was the spike in oil prices. They have a problem keeping up with a rapid price rise, but a quarter later they have caught up and the stock has come back. He thinks the electric vehicle infrastructure will take a lot longer than the market anticipates, which gives Couche-Tard a longer time to adapt. He expects them to turn in nice cash flows under their current model for at least a decade. Headwinds? (a) sharply rising energy prices over the short term; (b) reduced driving miles, as a social trend; (c) currency risk, because they are effectively long the US dollar, though this is currently a tailwind for them; and (d) changing habits of their customers such as increased cigarette regulation.

This is a classic potential value trap. It looks very cheap on a short-term basis but the assets that it has are not low-cost assets. However, of the base metals, he is most bullish on zinc. This is a good way for someone to take a levered position on zinc, but he thinks base metal fundamentals are challenged now. The trend for base metals seems to be downward, and there was a huge stocking up of inventories of base metals back in the spring, especially on the Shanghai exchange, and that still has to be unwound. He was generally short base materials in the Spring but is neutral now. He is still short the renewable energy materials, lithium and graphite, because he thinks the market is expecting the infrastructure that will use these to be built out faster than it will actually be built.

He usually invests in small-to-midcap companies, but he likes this one and owns a small position. The price has been dropping and he sees this as a good entry point. They have a lot of excess capital, which he expects them to deploy in the back half of the year. His guess is they will expand financial services -- PC Financial -- rather than retail. They have been growing PC Financial and he expects an acquisition in that space.

He would not short this because there is an ongoing big run up in anything associated with sports gambling and it looks as though the US will legalize that. Market cap is $100 million which would be easy to buy. He expects this to be acquired--no longer publicly traded--within a year, probably at a higher price.

He is short WestJet and has been long Air Canada against it. That is still the trade he would favour. WestJet built out too much capacity. There is no compelling reason to own it. Tax loss season is coming and companies that have underperformed, like WestJet, will stay under pressure.

He tends to short companies that show negative trends and he plans to stay short on this even though it has already dropped so much. It has had a few disastrous quarters in a row. There was chatter a year ago about them spinning out some real estate assets but apparently that failed. The balance sheet is now getting tight, with covenants that limit them to 4x debt to EBITDA. He thinks they’ll push up against that this quarter. He’ll stay short until they start improving their margins.

He likes this. It has $5 a share in cash and he likes that they have had the discipline to keep waiting for acquisitions that appear cheap enough to take over.

It screens well in his quantitative strategies. They had a big hiccup a year and a half ago with one of their restaurant royalties. Since then, they added an auto muffler and oil change service. It has grown quickly. The stock hasn’t done much but has built a big base at this level. He’s looking to buy more. He likes the interest-sensitive stocks now because he thinks the rate-hike cycle is almost done, especially in Canada. He thinks that a significant consumer slowdown has started, which will put a brake on rates. In the US, the Fed has been indicating too that it is slowing rate hikes. (Analysts’ price target is $4.13)

(A Top Pick June 23, 2017. Up 3%). This is the biggest position in his small-cap fund. He likes it from the fundamental change perspective and as a possible takeover..