For GT Blog May 27, 2009

The great advance in most of the major world bourses from the early March 2009 lows has now generated much opinion and controversy as to the structure of the advance

Is this the beginning of a new bull market or – just another bear market rally?

The bears sitting on the sidelines are praying for a correction – even a retest of the March lows so they can finally get invested. One money manager sitting in cash has gone public with the following table setting out modern bear market rallies in the S&P500 since 1960

The average gain was 17.66% and the average bull skew in weeks was 5.8 weeks – compare those numbers to the current advance - now gaining 30+% and into week 12 which in terms of magnitude and time are both double the average modern bear rally – We conclude the current advance is not a bear rally – and that’s no bull

The April – May 2001 bear market rally

For GT Blog May 22, 2009

Hello fellow bloggers and stock market participants.

Just to repeat – I am not a gold bug – I simply believe there are times to own gold stocks and there are times to ignore them. Last week we ran a relative comparison of bullion and a gold index (all US$) – noting the strong relative outperform and new cycle bottom in the hold stocks

The declining US dollar and the rebound in the US 10-y Note yields is obvious and so we assume the worst place to be now is in the US dollar and US Treasuries

However - a falling US dollar is a positive for the Dow Industrials which is loaded with US multinationals – but the strong CDN dollar will hurt our returns – this has us confronted with an investing dilemma

We have to own something because cash earns nothing and so that is why the precious metals complex and the TSX Materials complex seems to the place to be. Our gold silver chart suggests that silver may afford more opportunity than gold and so why not seek out the silver components of the TSX Materials sector?
A visit to the cluttered TSX web site turns up the following silver names - Silver Wheaton Corp. SLW, Silver Standard Resources Inc. SSO, Silvercorp Metals Inc. SVM – other smaller names are ECU Silver, Endevour and Pan American – call your advisor

For GT Blog May 20, 2009

Hello fellow bloggers and stock market participants.

Time for my one and only stock pick - a stock that I will love at least for a few weeks - don't forget we are here for a good time - not a long time

Also remember that if we fall in love with a stock - it will never love us in return - stocks don't know or care who owns them. If your stocks love is not working for you - dump it - run away because there will always be another attractive story for you to embrace

I have had two serious stock affairs so far this year. In early March 2009 I fell in love with Bank of Nova Scotia at $26 and then bailed at $33 when in mid April the attractive Trinidad Energy Services reeled me in at $3.50 - love at first sight

Now at the $5.50 level Trinidad is showing her age - especially in the morning sun and alas, I must move on

I do admit as this bull market up-leg advances most of the attractive stocks are taken - the lower fruit has been picked - and so I must select from more obscure names - and so a filter was need to seek new and early relative out-performers from the TSX data base

TimberWest Forest Corp. (TWF.UN-T) is a land management company. The Company is an owner of private forest lands in Western Canada - sounds like an over-looked recovery play - but the chart tells all - a youthful relative out-perform and a youthful intermediate stock cycle

TimberWest Forest Corp. (TWF.UN-T)