A Comment -- General Comments From an Expert (A Commentary)

Oil. Some technicians are calling for oil to weaken to $60 or maybe even $55 this fall. He'll wait to see if this plays out. When he sees oil getting up to $85, he lightens up but when it gets down to high $60's or low $70's, he starts to chip away at names he likes.

Natural Gas: Would all trucks end up running on Natural Gas? Would be at least 10 year to establish the infrastructure and regulatory system.

The world is very concerned about the numbers out of the US and out of China. There’s a lot of concern about growth globally. This is the opportunity to pick away at the better quality names. The talk of double dip is overblown. You need negative data to get into double dip territory. The FED can print money.

(A Top Pick Aug 25/09. Up 16.68%.) Province of Ontario (Australia$) bond maturing 2016 with about a 6.75% yield to maturity. Made money on both currency and the bond itself.

Japan? Strong currency in an exporting nation is not good. Not fairly attractive from a demographic standpoint. Has debt issues and a stagnant economy.

Historically, midterm election year markets go higher in 3rd week of April and tend to move lower until end of September when they bottom. Then go higher for the next 12 months. Expected to be end of October this year because Bush tax cuts are coming off at yearend and a lot of people will want to claim capital gains. Market will be so oversold it will give a classic buying opportunity.

Gold. IMF still has 150 tons of its original form and 50 tons of gold. They are under pressure to get rid of the last 150 and this is overhanging the market and keeping gold from going to an all-time high. If they were to blow out the last 150, look for gold to spike to all-time highs. He has a technical target of $1440 by year-end based on this scenario.

Natural gas. An ugly chart. Just broke a key support this week. Historically it does well the middle of Sept until the end of Dec but it hasn't happened in the last couple of years.

Oil service stocks. The bottom is normally reached around the 3rd week of Nov but the real sweet spot is from end of Jan to around the 1st week in May. You might consider HOLDRs Oil Services (OIH-N) ETF at that time.

Power Financial (PWF-T) or Power Corp (POW-T)? Both have come off a good deal. Power Financial is overwhelmingly Great West Life (GWO-T) and Investors Group (IGM-T). Power Corp has holdings in China, Europe and Quebec so it is a broader holding company. Your choice.

How do you make money these days: Dividends! He looks all over N.A. for free cash flow, distribution or dividend, strong balance sheet.

There’s a strong possibility that it could be a severe slow down, but there is a good possibility that we could escape it. So far it has been a financial recession, not an inventory recession. These take a long time to work through the system (we are at 2 of 7 years). We are going to see muted growth. A recovery without great gains in employment. His clients are in balanced portfolios. He stays at the short end of bonds. In the stock market, you take some capital risk. You need a 5 year time horizon.

Fundamentals on Gas have only gotten worse. The gas price to earn a 15% rate of return is about $3.30 to $4.30. Pretty high supply and tempered demand. Oil has been falling off, based on news of slowing global economic growth. But there are opportunities: dirt-cheap companies; balance sheets that can withstand low natural gas prices for the next 1-2 years.

Growth stocks in RRSP and TFSA accounts and dividend stocks in a normal count? This gives you tax optimization and is a great personal finance principle that has been used for generations.

Most indexed funds and ETFs are similar in what they are trying to do but he feels most ETFs are better in the way they go about doing it. You can trade ETFs throughout the day. The main difference is, look under the hood to see what they are tracking and also the costs.