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Just broke out, almost an anomaly in the oil patch. Exceptional chart; looks very, very good. After a beating in 2022, chart for nat gas is now in a holding range and at the top of that range. Yield is 2.4%.

Looking at the 3-year chart, it has broken down. But there's a pretty good level of support coming in. Plus fundamental reasons for owning silver -- could be a good inflation or currency hedge. Not a bad position to take advantage of the old resistance / new support level.

Decent-sized position, he's been legging in. Likes it because it's not completely correlated to the S&P 500, but close enough. Doesn't argue with the chart or the trend of the market, but acknowledges that it could be overvalued. This pick has about a 25% cash hold, which is pretty heavy. Also has a value slant when it buys new positions. Safer way to play the market but still participate.

Lagging the S&P lately, but that's because it's 25% in cash. No dividend.

Typically, but best seasonal trends come when September and October are inherently weak. We didn't see that. In the case of an election year, there's some relief around the post-election period and we've already seen a lot of that. 

When you listen to what's coming from the street, that they're going to tighten up their year-end targets, generally they're moving a bit higher. No one was forecasting a 6000 S&P target 3-12 months ago. Markets have surprised to the upside, and the street is playing catchup.

The question is, how much more is left? An awful lot of positives are priced into the market, but as long as there are no negatives there's no reason for people to sell and run. 

We pretty well know who Trump's cabinet's going to be, despite some approvals needed by the Senate. Absent any dramatic moves, the market's quite satisfied with the slate overall. Especially now that we know who's in Treasury.

Powell and the Fed think they have inflation under control, but the data will present differently. Stock market's at all-time highs, so why are they cutting rates? Yeah, inflation's come down, but the last few inflation prints are up. If PCE comes in at the core a little hotter than expected, those are the kinds of things that will upset the apple cart and prompt investors to want to take a bit off the table.

Managing inflation certainly doesn't mean cutting rates, but the Fed doesn't want to raise rates either. Economic weakness will define when the next big period of market unrest is going to come.

More pressure coming on the yield curve side. He's a bit confused as to why, but thinks it might be short-covering driving rates coming off their worst levels. There's a high probability we'll test the extremes of what we've seen in the last year or two. This means the long end of the curve would get a lot closer to 5% than it is today before things settle in.

Next quarterly funding announcement, which is where the Treasury tells us what the composition is, is going to be headed by Bessent instead of Yellen. We'll see if there's a change in policy with the issuance between bills and coupons; with more coupons, there's far more normalization of the process. More coupons mean longer duration and more competition with equities and other assets. Higher issuance of bills, as under Yellen, makes financial conditions easier. 

When he talks about private markets, he means stuff that isn't listed on an exchange. One of the biggest differences is the ability to trade it every day. There are private credit funds, like this one, that trade publicly but are subject to the manic moods of the intraday. Yet the valuation of the underlying portfolio doesn't change that much.

So what he means is the ability to earn the illiquidity premium by going into private markets, where you can't trade it every day. You can only trade once a month, quarter, or year. The volatility in your portfolio is a lot better. You give up liquidity, but you gain in extra yield via the premium.

A great vehicle, but not what he means by private markets.

Likes ICLN long term (ZCLN is the Canadian version). Challenge is that under a climate-friendly Biden administration, it did poorly. You need to look at the 5-year chart to gain perspective. When Biden was elected, a lot of these names had a lot of excitement around them and the ETF really shot up. But there was no follow-through, so the chart looks like a multi-year low. It's certainly not going to improve under a Trump presidency.

Cheap relative to lots of things out there. When Trump won the nomination, a lot of solar/wind/clean energy stocks got absolutely crushed. If you're a long-term thinker, this is the time to buy, when there's blood in the streets.

Likes ICLN long term (ZCLN is the Canadian version). Challenge is that under a climate-friendly Biden administration, it did poorly. You need to look at the 5-year chart to gain perspective. When Biden was elected, a lot of these names had a lot of excitement around them and the ETF really shot up. But there was no follow-through, so the chart looks like a multi-year low. It's certainly not going to improve under a Trump presidency.

Cheap relative to lots of things out there. When Trump won the nomination, a lot of solar/wind/clean energy stocks got absolutely crushed. If you're a long-term thinker, this is the time to buy, when there's blood in the streets.

You want floating rates in your portfolio when yields are going up, as it mitigates the negative impact of prices changing. The floating nature means the coupons can set a lot more frequently than would a 10-year bond.

If you think about a series of 3-month bonds or other short-term securities, always giving you the current coupon when they roll over, as yields go up you're getting higher yields. But if you owned a 10-year bond over that window as yields were going up, the price of that 10-year would go down to adjust.

Right now, we're in an environment of cutting rates. So you would want to term out some of your debt. We missed a lot of that rally already. So right now, he wouldn't advocate having this in your portfolio. Make sure you don't look at the past yield and assume you're getting that going forward, because that's not the case. With yields going down, the coupons will reset lower to lower yields going forward.

Likes it. About 10-12% upside analysts' 12-month price targets. Definitely buy it on dips. Brookfield is an exceptional operator in the infrastructure space, a name you want to own. Rate-sensitive, headwinds if rates go up. If Fed is stuck between lowering and raising rates, this is a range-trader.

Up at $45, where it peaked in 2022, he doesn't see the risk/return. Not really a growth play.

XST is made up of Canadian retail grocers. Huge weight in Loblaw and Couche-Tard, making up about half of the ETF. Rest will be Metro, Weston, Empire, Saputo, Maple Leaf. Somewhat resilient. No matter what happens in an economy, people need groceries. Less volatility than ZLU.

ZLU is low volatility exposure to a broader cohort of stocks, not just consumer staples. A US play. Lower volatility, but broader economic exposure. Will tend to outperform the S&P 500 in a market correction. Really likes it.

XST is made up of Canadian retail grocers. Huge weight in Loblaw and Couche-Tard, making up about half of the ETF. Rest will be Metro, Weston, Empire, Saputo, Maple Leaf. Somewhat resilient. No matter what happens in an economy, people need groceries. Less volatility than ZLU.

ZLU is low volatility exposure to a broader cohort of stocks, not just consumer staples. A US play. Lower volatility, but broader economic exposure. Will tend to outperform the S&P 500 in a market correction. Really likes it.

When you go for high-dividend payers in Canada you get the banks, insurance companies, pipelines, and some of the energy names. Yield will be a bit over 4%. A nice way to play.

Vanguard, iShares, and BMO all have offerings, but they all do it slightly differently. BMO has a covered call version, ZWC. There's ZDV, XDV, VDY. Take a look at them all and see what you like. All have different weights to the components. They're all equally good.