A Research In Motion BlackBerry Storm is pictured in New York. LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

When it comes to recovery on the markets, few areas have posted as robust a rebound as the technology sector. Which leads to a rather obvious question: Is it too late for investors to jump in?

After all, it can be dangerous to get into a sector after it bounces some 50 per cent off its lows. Or at least, those were the old rules – rules that were written before one of the most spectacular market crashes in history.

The tech index on the S&P/TSX is up a resounding 36 per cent since the beginning of the year, and an even more impressive 52 per cent from its March 9 lows. With a gain of 37 per cent, only the financial services sector is up more in 2009.

“You’re not supposed to jump in after such a run, but counteracting that is the fact that we are not in the late stages of an economic cycle,” said Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSAM Consulting. “If we are indeed in a recovery, it’s still early. And technology tends to do well early in a recovery – always has, and probably always will.”

More..

Bank of Canada

Currency traders are betting that a U.S. recovery will spark a global recovery “and Canada will be the beneficiary of that,” Bank of Nova Scotia currency strategist Camilla Sutton said this week.

More..

The Canadian dollar is cheap (in PPP terms) versus the U.S. dollar. Canada’s banks are strong and more conservative than ours and its government is conservative and sensible. And unlike the United States, Canada is an energy exporter. In fact, Hydro-Quebec is the world’s largest producer of hydroelectric power.

Here then are three top Canadian stocks you should buy now to maximize your returns in 2009.

Top Canadian Stock #1

In a recent interview posted at Kudlow’s Money Politics, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told readers, “We have, I think, the only banks in the western world where we’re not looking at bailouts… We haven’t got any TARP money… We don’t have a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac equivalent mucking around in the system.”

See any difference here from the Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Hank Paulson, Captain Geitner approach?

Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) is my number-one Canadian bank stock. Founded in 1832, the Bank of Nova Scotia got off to a rough start. None of the board members really knew anything about banking, and the man chosen to manage the bank swindled it to the tune of C$315,000. Not a small sum in 1844. But Bank of Nova Scotia bounced back.

Today, Bank of Nova Scotia is one of Canada’s “Big 5″ banks. For 2008, Scotia Capital, Bank of Nova Scotia’s investment banking arm, was named Best Investment Bank in Canada and Best Investment Bank globally in the infrastructure sector by Global Finance magazine.

Buy Bank of Nova Scotia below trend.

More..

Canadians, for their part, increased their holdings in foreign securities for the first time in five months, adding $4.2-billion to their portfolios in the form of short-term debt instruments and U.S. equities, as U.S. share prices fell to a six-year low.

Foreign investors bought $10.7-billion in Canadian debt instruments in January, the largest investment since November 2006, Statistics Canada said.

The $4.2-billion investment in money-market instruments represented an increase of more than 50 per cent in holdings of Canadian paper over the past three months. Meanwhile, purchases of federal government debt securities represented the bulk of the $6.5-billion spent on Canadian bonds, the federal agency reported.

Non-residents sold $313-million worth of Canadian equities in January, with sales concentrated in financial and non-precious metal sectors.

More..

The idea of investing in Canadian bank shares may be too nerve-wracking for most investors to contemplate as the financial crisis drags on but the capital hungry sector is making it difficult to stay away.

Thursday, the Royal Bank of Canada sweetened its dividend reinvestment plan [DRIP] by offering a 3% discount for common and preferred shareholders wishing to reinvest their dividends into more RBC stock. The last time it offered a DRIP discount program was in 1992.

In Toronto, all banks made impressive gains including a 6% spike for RBC as better-than-expected earnings pushed the S&P/TSX composite index up 3% for its best gain of the year.

RBC’s change to its DRIP program follows an earlier one by the Bank of Montreal, which offers a 2% discount on its own share purchase plan for shareholders of record on February 6th. BMO soared 10% on Thursday.

“The banks want to raise capital and getting some of their dividends back as additional equity is very appealing to them,” says T. E. Wealth’s Warren Baldwin.

But discounted DRIP programs are also a win for investors. With banks yielding a mouth-watering 6.27% to 9.72% these days, what’s not to like if you’re an income-oriented investor with a long time horizon?

More..

When Ed Clark receives his multi-million-dollar bonus next week, the chief executive of TD Bank will face immediate pressure to return the money.

Bay Street’s best-paid chieftain is being singled out by shareholders after three of his peers handed back their bonuses at a time when bank bosses around the world are being publicly shamed for dragging the globe into the worst recession in decades.

The pressure from investors comes amid growing signs that a deep shift is afoot in the way executives and investment bankers on Bay Street are paid that could have a lasting impact on the industry.

Shareholders, regulators and politicians are beginning to push for far-reaching changes in incentives in a bid to mitigate risk and help avoid the catastrophic failures that have plunged the global banking industry into crisis.

Some of Canada’s banks are already exploring ways to change their reward structure for investment bankers to avoid creating incentives for dealmakers to hastily arrange risky deals and walk away after collecting their bonuses.

More..

In January, there was widespread speculation that the economy could repair itself just as quickly as it had soured. The hope was that maybe the worst had already passed.

There is a small cadre of finance whizzes and fringe academics who have, at various volumes, been predicting a market crash and burn for years. In Canada, one of the most prominent among those is Prem Watsa, the humble CEO of Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings. Back in 2003, he and his team concluded that the U.S. housing market was in a speculative froth; from 2003 to 2007, his group hedged against the conventional wisdom in their industry, buying up protection against banks and other entities exposed to the lending and mortgage boom. “We just thought it was a question of time before that came to haunt people,” Mr. Watsa said in a recent interview. “We’ve had 20 years of a great economy without a recession.”

More..

Among them is defeated Liberal MP Garth Turner. Turner who left the Sun in 1988 to enter politics, lost in the 1993 election where the Tories were reduced to a party of two, then ran again as Halton’s Tory candidate in 2006 and won — doesn’t qualify for a lump-sum severance package because he’s over age 55.

But he does qualify for a yearly pension of $40,663, which means if he lives to be 75, he’ll collect a whopping $773,090. Not bad for six years on the job.

The biggest payout goes to retiring NDP MP Bill Blaikie, whose pension pays him $122,224 a year, for a total of $2.7 million if he lives to 75.

More..

The Key features that must be considered when evaluating Bank Stocks are P/E ratios and Dividend yields; although, many other variables may be considered. Look to the P/E and Dividend yield for entry points and if you think yourself more astute than the market sell when things become too good in your view.

If you buy any of these banks your investment is very likely to beat the market if you hold the investment long enough. This means even if you bought at a market top you can still be profitable over the long run. The best time to buy though is when the market turns its back and beats up the stocks: probably when yields creep up above 4 or 5 %.