According to the Globe and Mail web site, the top three Canadian equity mutual funds with assets greater than $100-million based on one year performance as of October 31, 2009 were:

1. TD Canadian Value (21.97%)
2. Mackenzie Saxon Stock Fund SI (21.12%)
3. Ferique Equity (20.81%)

In comparison, my three Canadian ETF models posted one year returns as follows:

1. HXU / XSB (27.7%)
2. HXU / CLF (27.2%)
3. HXU / CMR (22.8%)

My worst performing model beat the best mutual fund offered by every mutual fund provider.  It’s enough to make a guy smile!

FJP

My US timers are short and it hasn’t been much fun sitting on the wrong side of the trade this past few days. However, if you look at the two following charts you will note that volumes surged with the market decline and then tapered off as the markets rose. In other words, the market lacks conviction in terms of upward movement.

I am long the Canadian market and note that the strong volume trends evident in the US markets lately aren’t present in the Canadian market.

Thank you for your interest in my trades.  I have made the decision to no longer post my trades on Covestor effective immediately.  The Covestor team are a great bunch and I wish them all the best.

For those of you who are interested in following my Canadian timing signals, I have started a system on Collective2 called “Canada Leveraged” which will trade the iShares Canada Fund (EWC) as a proxy for HXU (I will be using margin). The results will not be the same as buying HXU but you will get the signals.

FJP

I like to compare the performance of my market timing ETF models against similar professionally managed funds where possible.  For my Canadian models which are based on Horizons Beta Pro S&P/TSX 60 Bull Plus ETF, the best fund available for me to compare performance against is the Horizons AlphaPro Managed S&P/TSX 60 ETF.  According to the Horizons web site “Expert insight and research provided by Ron Meisels, President of Phases & Cycles Inc.” is used for this fund.

The AlphaPro Managed ETF was introduced early this year and since it started trading it has gained 10.0%. In comparison, my worst performing Canadian model this year, HXU/CMR, is up 22.3% which is more than double the performance of the professionally managed ETF over the same time period.

FJP

Rolfe Winkler is a Reuters columnist and blogger.  One of Winkler’s blog posts provides his analysis of the degree of TARP funding that Buffett’s companies received.  Here’s an excerpt:

A good chunk of his fortune is dependent on taxpayer largess. Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company’s stock holdings would have been wiped out.

Berkshire Hathaway, in which Buffett owns 27 percent, according to a recent proxy filing, has more than $26 billion invested in eight financial companies that have received bailout money.  The TARP at one point had nearly $100 billion invested in these companies and, according to new data released by Thomson Reuters, FDIC backs more than $130 billion of their debt.

FJP