- Dugald Malcolm

Montreal, Canada.

Despite hopes for a much needed market correction back down to the 1,030 area, we will have to make do with February's 8.1% pullback - at least for now.

Montreal, Canada

The bears are running for cover in March. After touching important support levels recently, many averages are now on the verge of breaking-out.

Several U.S. benchmarks broke into new territory last Friday as they surpassed previous highs established in January. The move might signal a broader trend as other indices join the rally.

Montreal, Canada

Ten years ago you wouldn't find a value fund holding a single technology stock. Today, many of the world's top-performing U.S. and global equity funds hold significant positions in these companies as they've transitioned from bubble-stocks to cash-rich darlings.

Montreal, Canada

The odds that central banks in the major market economies will get their timing exactly right as they withdraw mountains of excess liquidity from the financial system remains low. Both the Federal Reserve and The European Central Bank (ECB) threaten a budding economic recovery by undoing unorthodox monetary and financial intermediation assistance programs at a time when several key markets remain frail and still dependent on government support.

Montreal, Canada

Universally regarded as "poor man's gold," silver is at the cusp of a major secular rally that will outpace gold prices as the next leg of the bull market takes hold in 2010-2011. Adjusted for inflation since 1980, silver prices should be trading at roughly $128 an ounce. But massive manipulation from four major short-sellers, including J.P. Morgan, has placed enormous pressure on silver over the last several months even as investment demand soars, mainly from booming coin sales and ETFs, or exchange-traded funds.

Montreal, Canada

The British pound is now the whipping boy in foreign-exchange markets as the baton is handed down from the EUR – both trashed since late November against the U.S. dollar and gold bullion. Fears of a hung U.K. parliament ahead of elections this spring are causing widespread discontent for gilt, or British bond, investors. But that's not necessarily the case for U.K. investors in domestic stocks.

Montreal, Canada

Back in December, I purchased XLU, or the SPDRs Utilities ETF, on the premise that income-producing stocks with steady earnings would continue to outpace the broader market in a sluggish economy. But the short-term price action for this sector has turned bearish lately and now warrants investor caution.

- Dugald Malcolm

Montreal, Canada

The S&P 500's trend continues to be downward, despite recent movement to the upside. Formidable levels of resistance have contained the recent rally, preventing it from regaining the peak levels made back in January.

Chicago (en route to Phoenix)

Earlier last month I made the case for buying assets that have been depressed over the last several months and beyond since the market hit a low on March 9, 2009. I still believe that low was not "the low" but an intermittent low in the confines of a secular bear market that began in October 2007.

Montreal, Canada

George Soros wants them banned. And now several European governments want to banish them, too.

Credit default swaps, or CDS's, are in the firing line this month as critics of the trade hammer down on banks and hedge funds amassing big bets against Greek and other weak sovereign government bond markets. The Greek government is also coming under fire for its 2001 arrangement with Goldman Sachs for structuring swap contracts that might have resulted in obscuring Greece's fiscal woes.