Me? I haven’t changed my mind – not about Iraq (I was against the war from the beginning), not about the economy - I play long and safe. If you have the "pelotas" – the "cojones" – the current market turbulence could be a great buying opportunity. In his column in the Globe and Mail, Avner Mandelm suggests investors "keep a list of [their] favourite stocks, even the best and the most senior, and the prices you would consider bargains. You may just see them, perhaps only for a day or two, and then you'd have to steel your innards against fear and buy. Yes, increasing market fluctuations may play havoc with your digestion, but if your guts are strong enough to stand it, this could be very good for your pocket." Avner attributes a lot of market volitility in great part to a change in the rules affecting the NYSE, specifically the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's elimination of the "sell short on an uptick" rule. From July 6 onwards, "speculators and investors can sell … big-cap stocks short on downticks, and indeed have been doing so; thus, the Dow Jones industrial average and S&P stocks have begun fluctuating as wildly as the Nasdaq, popping right back up the next day." Read his column for the full explanation – good information.
There are lots of opinions out there, on both the bear and bull side of things. I believe there are some solid buying opportunites out there, for the long run. There will be lots of cause for panic in the coming weeks and months, and there will be many sell-offs I'm sure. In his column, also in the Globe, ROB CARRICK quotes Miles Zyblock, chief institutional strategist at RBC Dominion Securities:
"Mr. Zyblock suggests investors stick to blue-chip dividend stocks like Power Financial Corp., Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd., Manulife Financial Corp. and Fortis Inc. in the Canadian market, and with names like Johnson & Johnson, General Electric Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in the U.S. market. Focus on buying quality investments and forget about capturing better stock bargains ahead, he said.”
Vincent Delisle, market strategist at Scotia Capital, predicts that the leading sectors on the Toronto Stock Exchange are about to change.
Energy and metals stocks had a great run, but they're going to be overtaken by technology, telecom and industrials. Oh, and financials, too. They were a natural selling target this week as a result of concern about subprime lending, but Canadian banks may not be as deserving of this rough treatment as their peers in the United States and Europe. Earlier this month, Dominion Bond Rating Service said that while the Big Five Canadian banks do have some exposure to subprime loans in the United States it's not significant enough to alter their credit ratings. "We think that once Canadian banks report their fiscal third-quarter results, it will probably alleviate the fear in the market right now that anything financial is linked to potential problems with hedge funds and subprime," Mr. Delisle said.
In previous blog posts I reviewed and recommended Royal Bank and GE. I'll also throw another company I reviewed and recommended into this group, which is Rogers. Though it has not been traditionally viewed as blue-chip, it’s certainly on its way.
Its all about conservative and safe in these tumultuous times. In the next little while I will profile some more safe and conservative stocks. After-all, we don't have the benefit of hind-sight. In the case of Dick Cheney, I wonder if he had his memory blanked. Check out the transcript of the youtube clip embedded above:
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
We need some Rod Sirling voice-over and Twilight Zone theme music for that . . .
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