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

Markets. He is constructive on the market. Was nervous coming into the year, because the Fed was too eager to raise rates, and really put things into chaos when Stanley Fisher said there were going to be 4 hikes. Commodity markets at that point hadn’t stabilized, so they went into a deep plunge. After Janet Yellin backed off mid-February, commodities rebounded, high-yield spreads tightened up significantly, and the back end of the yield curve has moved up, not enough, but signalled some breathing room. One of the more encouraging things was the recent rhetoric since the end of April. Even though the dollar has moved up about 5%-6%, oil has moved up in the same month. We have a world right now where the long end, the 10-year yield, is below 2%. You don’t have to raise rates very much where you shut credit down. If they pushed rates above 1% too quickly, they would shut it down.

Energy. Believes we are past the bottom. Doesn’t think it is going to be a rocket ship going up, but believes prices are going to improve going forward. The long down cycle in energy was exasperated when some of the OPEC players decided to produce wide open, and now everybody is producing wide open. The good news is that the market is almost in balance despite all the OPEC Middle East production. There has never been a time in the past 15 years when there wasn’t at least 5-10 million barrels being held off the market by OPEC. Now we are wide open and we worry every day about someone coming on with a couple of hundred thousand barrels a day. None of that matters. What matters is that drilling rigs that caused the big global upturn in production have dropped from 1600 to 318 running today. We are at a point where supply growth is going to be constrained and supply growth will start to come back as we get into the $50s. An upswing in oil could last several years.

Economy. Coming into this year we had the fear of weak demand, similar to January 2015 when everybody was freaking out about a weak China and a weak global economy. Fast-forward to the end of 2015 which showed the strongest growth in 5 years. The same pattern is coming to pass this year, where once again China’s weak global economy is perceived to be weak, and yet demand is growing by about 1.4 million barrels per day. The issue was oversupply which is now almost approaching zero, courtesy of very strong demand and supply falling off the cliff, not just in the US. US production is now down to about 800,000 barrels a day from the peak. That trend will continue until we get a high enough oil price to allow for an increase in activity in the US. The rig count now is at about half of where it needs to be able to maintain flat production, let alone to grow production. For 2017, 2018 and 2019, unless we incentivize an increase in activity in the US, he thinks we will be short of oil and we will get a price hike. He thinks we are going to see $60-$65 in the next 6-12 months. January and February was the worst period in the history of the oil and gas business. We have come through that period and the worst is over.

Markets. We’ve had a pretty good run and are at a bit of a resistance point. Feels we are going to work our way through that, but it may take a while. Energy stocks have been a big driver, and we will have to wait to see if $50 a barrel is attainable and can hold for a while. There is a lot of speculation out there, and it could be speculation rather than demand. This may take a few weeks. He is a great believer that the US housing market has a lot of ground to make up. The fact that it costs more to rent than it does to buy a house will put pressure on. Housing start numbers swing back and forth, but the existing number on sales is quite good. This is a huge area which includes refrigerators, air conditioners, carpets, furniture, etc.

Natural gas? This is a sector where technology has made it a lot cheaper to produce. In North America we have a surplus of gas. There are still some major areas in the US that are still developing. A terrible area to be in. He eliminated all of his gas stocks.

Markets. Canadian stock market investors haven’t fully digested the impact of the commodity rout. There is a lot of reason for caution, but there is a lot of reason for optimism as well. For instance, in the US, the earnings ratios outside of energy are looking a little attractive. In Canada, with oil hitting $50 for the 1^st time in 7 months, that is an encouraging sign.

Bull ETF’s? These are leveraged products and will give you 2X the performance of an underlying index, such as crude oil futures, but will do it for only one day, and then they reset that leverage. For the next trading day, they will again give you 2X that performance. Because of the daily resetting of the leverage, it is not like taking out margins and doubling your exposure to a stock or an index. You are resetting your leverage every day which introduces an element called past dependence to the trade. If you hold for more than one day or a month, that may be too long and not in line with your expectations. He recommends these for short term Holds only.

Market. These are challenging times. There are a lot of cross currents. Portfolio convexity is a way to reduce the impact of what could be temporal things. He has always taken a different approach to risk management. Believes in risk management, which means you don’t take big losses, you may focus in on a sector, etc. He is now talking about something different. Within the sectors, how are you appropriating risk? Diversifying with bonds and stocks is not necessarily the correct approach. Depending on how they are moving and reacting the convexity can be created across asset classes. Using equities as an example, the pro-cyclicals had a nice little run since the lows in February and the Feds are going to talk again in June and July which are critical meetings. On the other side there have been the defensive plays that are really holding the bid here. The US 10 year doesn’t quite confirm what we are seeing. If this pro-cyclical move has got some legs he expects to see the 10-year north of 2%. However, the way to get around this is convexity, which spreads risks out and you tilt it based on what you think. He is a little more defensively tilted, but he does have pro-growth in there.

China. This is something that can move the needle in the next few months. There has been a steady and quiet devaluation of the yuan. They set this every couple of days, and then give it 2% from that level. They are going to move the needle either way. The US$ and emerging markets has a huge correlation to what we are seeing. If we see any weakness in the US$, we’ll probably see some weakness in emerging markets.

Markets. We have only so much patience. The market broke the 2000 highs in the beginning of 2013 and has chipped itself sideways since then. Every 3 years we get a really big decline. Despite the fact we are near highs, the S&P short interest is at all time highs. There is tremendous bearishness yet he sees from his models that we have healthy markets. He thinks there are a lot of people on the wrong foot on this market. This is a great contrarian indicator. After a 2/3^rd decline in energy we are likely to have a 50% upside.

Dividends and capital growth for the top 5 Canadian banks going forward? Historically Canadian banks have been one of the best performing asset classes of all time. There has been some concern that perhaps with lower interest rates and defaults in the oil patch, they might be a worse investment. Bank of Montréal (BMO-T) came out with pretty good earnings today and raised their dividend by 2%. Feels the banks are very, very solid. Not sure he would be buying at this time, but would continue holding them.

Lithium? He wasn’t courageous enough to plunge into the lithium bubble. This is the new poster child for a commodity that is going to be in batteries. If Tesla builds all those cars that they have taken deposits on, and if lithium turns out to be the magic battery component, then there may be growth in lithium. The problem is the same as when you have a gold or copper bubble, literally dozens or hundreds of firms materialize and you don’t know which ones actually own lithium or just have an idea of it. If you own some and you have had a good run, at least take your original investment off the table.

Markets. There is a lot of free credit. Central banks globally have opened up the taps, and as a result there is a lot of mispriced securities. He is not sure what the end result will be. The question is if this is justified at this time. We will only find out the answer in the future. It is good to be prudent in this environment. He likes to invest in companies that don’t have input variables where there is no control or a high degree of predictability on.

Lithium stocks? There is a lot of talk as to whether lithium is the next big thing or not, and whether or not electric cars will be the major type of cars manufactured, especially in North America. Storage of energy is a big problem, and you need lithium to do that. It is pretty safe to say that lithium demand will increase going forward. Feels we are in the early innings. There are not too many global providers of lithium. You really have to pick your spot.

Markets. It continues to be the macro picture that drives momentum and sentiment, and it all seems to be stemming from the US Federal Reserve and expectations about when are they going to raise rates. There are a lot of implications for the US$ versus the rest of the basket. We have seen huge moves at the end of last year, and then year to date a reversal of a lot of that. Because the dollar is tied to commodities, there have been big runs in a lot of the commodity names. A very different picture year-to-date in the Canadian market than anywhere else globally. Whenever she gets macro noise that is taking the markets around, she tries to look for where opportunities are. The biggest thing is, will interest rates remain low enough for valuations to continue to make sense. She thinks they will. Doesn’t expect anybody will be in a rush to raise rates. Beyond that, what really drives things, is individual securities. Valuations are at bit higher than normal because of the low rate environment. The 2^nd piece is earnings, and when she looks at this we are no longer in structural, so 1 is the aging population and 2 is the debt, and we are no longer in a situation where the entire economy is growing. She has been advocating that it is going to be really difficult to do well in the market going forward with a passive approach, because the 2 things you need to do well is 1) valuations coming off lows or 2) broad-based economic growth. It is going to be more and more important in the high valuation/low growth world to really pick your spots with a portfolio that is more focused than broad market based.