Montreal, Canada

John Paulson, Chairman of Paulson & Co. and adviser to $33 billion in assets under management is bullish on stocks, gold bullion and gold mining equities. He also likes GMAC bonds.

Paulson made huge bets against mortgage-backed securities starting in 2006 and scored billions for his investors and himself as the housing market unravelled starting in mid-2007. That trade personally reaped him a $3 billion dollar profit.

Montreal, Canada

The world's weakest credits are starting to roll over.

Over the last 48 hours credit rating agencies have downgraded Spain, Greece and Dubai.

Montreal, Canada

Consumers aren't borrowing or they can't secure financing. Banks, flushed with cash, have been busy rebuilding reserves or paying back government TARP funds since June. But they're not lending.

Data from the Federal Reserve yesterday confirms the trend since mid-2008 whereby domestic consumption is impaired by tepid credit demand and loan growth.

Montreal, Canada

In a bull market, corrections are an opportunity to accumulate positions. That's exactly the case now with gold following a drubbing on Friday.

Montreal, Canada

JGAM`s ,or Jyske Bank Global Asset Management's, Thomas Fischer is buying the VIX after a big plunge for the fear gauge this year. Fischer, the senior vice-president of the Danish-based JGAM, made a prescient call before on the VIX back in late 2007 – just ahead of the credit collapse in 2008. He told me in November 2007 that he was personally loading-up on the VIX because volatility was just "too cheap." At the time, the VIX traded around 18.

Montreal, Canada

The world's greatest bond fund manager is bullish on utility stocks. Bill Gross, who runs the world's largest bond fund complex out of Newport Beach, California, is musing about the merits of owning relatively high-yielding utilities in late 2009.

Montreal, Canada

Is a strong currency a good thing?

Ultimately, a strong currency is bullish for domestic capital markets since it reinforces legitimacy of government fiscal policies, trends in domestic consumption and boosts foreign direct inflows. Global investors like buying a rising currency.

Montreal, Canada

Every year at this time I make it a point to warn investors about the pitfalls on investing in mutual funds and exchange-traded-funds, or ETFs. That's because under most market conditions the end of the year means per share distributions – usually in the form of capital gains, interest income and dividends -- depending on the investment objective of that product. And if you buy these securities in December you might be forking over an unwanted share of per share taxes due for the 2009 fiscal year.

Montreal, Canada

Over the last several months I’ve been warning about a sovereign nation defaulting on its foreign debt. I’ve also forecast some sort of market dislocation occurring in the emerging markets sphere where “bubbles” in credit, equities and some currencies might trigger a panic.

London, England

With gains exceeding 75% this year there's no doubt the emerging markets are the best performing global index in late 2009. No other global benchmark, in fact, has come close to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index over the last decade.