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Stocks hitting another record high today is one thing. But this week we get a huge percentage of S&P 500 market cap reporting, including 4 of the big 7 tech names. 

For him, it's all about what they say on capital expenditures regarding AI. Recent weeks have seen a massive runup in semiconductors. The market is, he believes, overly enthusiastic about peace in the Middle East. 

Central banks have meetings, and this will be Powell's last for the Fed. We're also getting a mid-year, financial update in Canada. The Carney government has a plan to attract international interest and investment in Canada.

Lots of things are moving markets right now, and all of them are important. But earnings matter the most.

When ORCL announced its plans, market was alarmed because it was unexpected. First, the market said "Yay", but then questioned how it was going to be financed. 

So the capex spend doesn't matter for the big names throwing off bags of cash and with deep balance sheets. We need to build. The AI agents provide incredible productivity.

While he's a supporter and advocate of Israel, he hates to say it but his lens on the world is that this is Israel's 9/11 moment. It's an opportunity to take out a state sponsor of terror. If not now, then when?

That's the unofficial agenda. Everything else is just posturing.

Last week's educational segment covered what the futures markets are telling us. Short term for this year -- if oil starts trading below $70 then we're past the worst. If we start getting above $80, then we really need to worry. Since the initial attack on Iran the oil price has bounced around, meaning that the market's unclear which way this is going.

You have to go back to the question of whether the Iran conflict is creating a temporary disruption, or will it last years and years? If it'll last years and years, then the equity market won't continue to make all-time highs. 

The equity market is saying this is temporary. If that's true, then you shouldn't be investing for 1-3 years in commodities. That's the camp he's in.

But each investor has to decide.

Five names in the index, so roughly 20% each. Relatively diversified in terms of pipelines, but only pipelines. Again, if you think the Iran conflict is temporary then you don't want to be investing long in the space. 

If you're a tactical trader, he's OK with it. Note that it doesn't trade at huge volumes.

If you're bullish on oil then this is not something you want to invest in, unless you're bullish and you need current income. The covered call strategy will give you yield, but remember that you're selling away the upside.

Expect it to underperform USO in a strong up market. It will do better in a flat, sideways, or slightly down market.

At lot of names in the food space ramped up over the past decade, and have now come back to earth in the last 2-3 years. As a value investor, he loves the sector. We all need to eat, and eventually things will turn around.

Input costs are a consideration for the next year for sure. Higher oil and supply disruptions in the Middle East are the cause. Those are short-term factors, but a lot of that is already discounted in current stock prices.

He's overweight a bunch of the food names. 

If you're bullish on oil, buy this one.

He's not an M&A expert, and he hasn't fully evaluated the deal. The government has to give its stamp of approval when a foreigner comes in to buy a Canadian company. Looking at market behaviour, seems to be some bit of doubt that this deal will go through. He expects it will happen.

If it fails, this stock will come back to the mid-$20s.

Public market securities. High yield, floating rate. Nothing to do with private credit, but everything to do with credit. BMO does an excellent job minimizing interest rate risk of investing in high-yield debt.

Whenever equities get volatile, credit spreads tend to widen. And you'll get downside price action, or more volatility, in the name.

Designed to extract the yield part of high yield, with less interest rate risk. Outperformed HYG by about 1%. Likes it if you want to be in high yield.

Mag 7 names with option strategies for income. All these new covered call strategies are designed for investors looking for more income, but you give up a lot of upside. Likes the tax-efficiency of them all; foreign income comes in as a capital gain. 

But if you're using it in your TFSA, you're missing out on that benefit completely (though it would still work there). Ideally suited for taxable accounts.

If you're taking market risk, why wouldn't you want the most total return possible? You can generate income from your TFSA simply by withdrawing funds, and there are no tax implications. You don't need the underlying fund to have income in it.

Semiconductor Rally

Semiconductors have been ripping last couple of weeks. Relative to the S&P, they've been a head-and-shoulders multiplier above it. The tendency is for the market to get excited about something, huge money runs in for a while, and then it goes sideways for quite a while.

Looking at a chart for SOX, it doubled in a relatively short period of time. Each rally was more intense on magnitude, but less in terms of time. That's matters behaviourally for markets, from the perspective of semis being the leader.

What's coming from hyperscalers this week, all the way through to NVDA's results a month from now, will matter for a continuation of this rally. We could, potentially, get a peak in markets.

The traders out there can try to play it. But we're very close to a peak trading top, and we could consolidate sideways for the next 6-12 months.

A lot of good news has been priced in. We need to get even better news than the expectations already built in.

He holds stocks for the long term and is not overly concerned about short term developments in the world caused by Trump, war, etc. This includes changes in the economy. Every five years we will go through a bear market. He just holds through it. When asked about the indicators of a technical recession, he sees it as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. We have had five years of negative GDP growth per capita and that is what matters to people. We have to get the economy back kicking. The US accounts for 20% of our GDP growth so the fighting and competition with them means we're going backwards.

Stocks he doesn't own he doesn't know as well. Oracle is transforming itself into an AI powerhouse - $50 billion spent on Capex this year compared to less than $25 billion last year. It is changing its stripes completely so if this doesn't work, it will be in trouble.

He has owned it for 12 years and hasn't sold any. The institutional part has grown as much as it can but the big companies are growing 15 to 20%. The retail business is potentially bigger than the institutional business with brand names catching a bigger share. Private credit may have had trouble but should be OK.