Canadian stocks rated by Iain Fraser

Asset-backed securities

At one of the big brokerage firms in New York, business is done as follows; one of the partners with his right hand sells $500 million asset-backed securites; which are rated top quality; same rating as a US goverment note; the commission could be 1% or 5 million. With his right hand he gets another customer to sell short $500 million asset-backed securites; commision again could be 1% or 5 million. He then goes home to his little estate in Long Island and tells his wife he had a good day at the office; it pays to speak with forked tongue.

Report on Business-Heavy Lifters

On the front page of today's ROB there is a huge chart of the S&P/TSX  Composite Index and the  comment that yesterday, for the first time since October 2000 the Index closed above 10,000. They went on to say that since the bottom in October of 2002 the Index has gone up  4,221 points and the heavy lifters were Encana  (+264 points) followed by, in order, BNS, TD Bank, CNQ, Royal Bank, Manulife, CIBC, Suncor. These were the top 8 stocks cntributing to the 4,221 point rise.

And we had them all as topicks in the past 31 months!

Numbers 9 and 10 on the ROB List were  RIM and BMO and we had neither of them.

Not too bad for a 22 handicapper..