C. Western Financial Group ( WES)

SIMPLY AMAZING !

Look at these statistics released Monday August 13th

Six Month Revenue - increased 32%
Net income - increased 88 %
Earnings Per Share - increased 27%

The Company

Western Financial Group is a leader in providing insurance, financial services and banking services in over 80 communities, to more than 400,000 individuals and businesses in Western Canada through its WFG Agency Network locations, its affiliated insurance brokers, Western Life Assurance Company and Bank West.

from http://www.amprogram.com

C. Is Oil headed Much Lower ?

Not likely.

I believe the credit crunch has forced hedge funds to sell their oil contracts to raise cash because they can't sell their mortgage portfolios .

What we saw in the last week has more to do with the sub-prime mortgage meltdown than anything else. It put the fear of freefall into fund traders, causing them to sell perfectly good stocks indiscriminately--especially perfectly good energy stocks, where they were sitting on some nice gains--in order to raise cash. It also gave a sell signal to oil futures traders, who had built up a record level of long positions.

In other words, it was the blowing off of some speculative froth, and little more. The true bottom line on energy is quite another matter.

Energy demand in the Emerging Economies

a quick view re demand in China, India is set out at http://www.amprogram.com

Paul Van Eeden article October 2006

This chart shows many interesting things. First of all, notice that from about 1950 to 1982, consumer spending contributed 62.3% to GDP with only minor deviations and, starting around 1982, consumer spending as a percentage of GDP gradually increased.
US economic growth was robust since 1982 but still consumer spending as a percentage of GDP was increasing: that means that consumer spending was increasing faster than GDP. It confirms that much of the increase in GDP has been due to the increase in consumer spending. Therefore, if consumer spending were to slow down, economic growth could take a considerable hit.

You probably also noticed that consumer spending declined dramatically during the Great Depression, but the chart above does not tell the whole story. So let us look at actual economic growth and personal consumption after the Crash of 1929.

The reason for going over all of this is to illustrate that consumer spending is a major driving force for economic growth and that we have seen a drastic increase in consumer spending as a percentage of GDP since 1982, coincident first with a bull market in stocks and bonds and then with a bull market in residential real estate. The residential real estate market is taking a bad beating, as seen in the HMI in the first chart. That should lead to a reduction in consumer spending and because economic growth is leveraged to consumer spending we can reasonably expect a material downturn in economic growth. That should then lead to a decline in stock prices and hence agrees with the prediction of the first chart that there is a real risk of a major downturn in US equities during the next twelve months.

chart does not reprint

hey jack25bc,

I tend to agree with you...
Do you have any hard facts, or sources that would back up your claim that "70% of the U.S. economy is supported by consumer spending"

I find these figures interesting... and it's something that I want to spend alot more time on.

Approximately 65% of the U.S. economy is supported by consumer spending.
Consumer spending is partly credit debt ,in addition to people simply buying out of current earnings and savings.
The worry about the shrinking home sales and prices in the U.S. - not Canada - is twofold:
a) consumers can no longer re-mortgage and use that money

on their shopping
b) lower home prices and the crisis talk in the media , make
people anxious - and they reduce spending because they fear

worse times are coming. This is despite a generally strong

U.S. economy.
c) it follows that if a trend of lower retail sales occurs the U.S.
economy will slow AND the U.S . consumer will not be

buying what Canada and the rest of the world has been

exporting to meet their demands.
d) lower stock prices also serve to drive consumers to be more

cautious about spending.

Jack

jack25bc

I'm curious,
How much of the stock market is fueled by consumer debt compared with commercial debt.?

Grey Horse ( GHC)

Grey Horse is a very new , very small niche player.
It provides trust services to the corporate market and the entire Company

can be purchased for $60 Million Canadian.
I am bring it to the Watchlist for the remarkablew growth that such a small

comapny can bring to your portfolio.
Look at the most recent fiqures released this week:

For the three month period ended June 30, 2007, Grey Horse's EBITDA increased by $1.4M or 113% over the previous year, and the Corporation's EBITDA margin increased by 7 percentage points to 39%. For the six month period ended June 30, 2007, Grey Horse's EBITDA increased $1.6M or 80% over the previous year and the Corporation's EBITDA margin increased 2 percentage points to 36%. The increase in EBITDA and in EBITDA margin reflects the benefits associated with the higher margin corporate trust and foreign

from http://www.amprogram.com

When the correction takes 400 points off the Dow it is more than

interesting that Antrim is up today .
Antrim has found oil in the North Sea - like Oilexco - and similarly continues to drill.
In addition it has projects in Argentina - rumors of oil only at this point.
In this correction - pick up the stongest candidates - they will rise more when the trend goes positive.
Part 2
My favorite question , in these trying days WWWD
( see http://www.amprogram.com) - meaning
What Would Warren ( Buffett) Do - you can be sure he's hunting the bargains - follow his example.

On a day like today we pass the time away -

investor Pat Boone's advice

When the correction takes 400 points off the Dow it is more than

interesting that Antrim is up today .
Antrim has found oil in the North Sea - like Oilexco - and similarly continues to drill.
In addition it has projects in Argentina - rumors of oil only at this point.
In this correction - pick up the stongest candidates - they will rise more when the trend goes positive.
Part 2
My favorite question , in these trying days WWWD
( see http://www.amprogram.com) - meaning
What Would Warren ( Buffett) Do - you can be sure he's hunting the bargains - follow his example.

On a day like today we pass the time away -

investor Pat Boone's advice

Yesterday I wrote at http://www.amprogram.com, that Tim Horton's had reached a 10% increase over the last few weeks - in a volatile market.
Today ( August 9th) Tim Horton's was up again - on the day Dow was down 400 points.
No news from the Company.
Watch this one !