Ted Dickson's blog

Insiders can help make sense of short selling data when it is released in the middle and at the end of every month. There are three general scenarios that can arise. First, if a stock is seeing both short covering and insider buying, we have two positive pieces of information leading to a bullish consensus.

In my latest interview with Jim Goddard, I explore how insiders are behaving during this period of transition as the Fed moves to tighten financial conditions after a decade of easy money. Based on our indicators, there are a few bright spots in North America, but generally the insider response to the market correction has been tepid.

From a Vancouver perspective, the Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau war with small business over proposed tax increases makes no sense. If this duo are really interested in tax fairness, why are they not devoting the same energy and government resources to cleaning up the money laundering industry and its related big dollar tax evasions?

In my latest interview with Jim Goddard on Howestreet.com, we talked about how insiders were on top of Canada's growth rebound six months before the Bank of Canada. Looking ahead, there are big implications for a wide range of assets if the Bank of Canada joins the global central bank tightening parade:

In my latest interview with Jim Goddard of Talk Digital Network, I highlight the high stakes at play in Tuesday's BC election. From resources to housing, the prosperity of the province, and to a lesser extent Canada, will be shaped by the outcome of the May 9th vote.

In our most recent market update to clients and my regular interview with Kirk Lapointe on Monday, I explained that the Bank of Canada needs to start talking about normalizing interest rates, because the economy is now growing and the rationale for having ultra low rates is evaporating. Indeed, we saw insiders anticipate the recovery in Western Canada during last fall's rebalancing of the INK Canadian Insider Index when the index make-up tilted towards Energy and Canadian retail names.

While investors are once again fixating on the upcoming March 15th Fed meeting, they should also be paying attention to a high level meeting likely taking place in Tokyo on the same day. Next Wednesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to start his northern Asian tour in Japan. Following his stop in Japan, over the following days he is expected to head to South Korea and China, in that order. A key topic will be North Korea which fired at least four missiles towards Japan earlier this week.

On Tuesday, the world will get the first serious insight into the Trump administration's priorities when the president addresses a joint session of congress. We got a hint of what may be in that speech when the New York Times wrote Sunday that the president will be asking for a major jump in defence spending. That news comes on the heels of further reports on the weekend from Reuters that China is investing heavily in naval capabilities to beef up its territorial claims in the South China and East China seas.

Before appearing on BNN's Business Day AM with Amber Kanwar and Jon Erlichman today, we wrote up a note for the show covering some key trends in the market and how insiders are positioning themselves. The background note was fairly extensive and we couldn't possibly cover it all in 7 minutes on television. But, I thought it would be worth sending the material to our readers because it covers a lot of ground, focusing on both institutional and speculative situations in the market.

The replay of the interview is now on the BNN website. If you missed the interview, you can watch it here: http://www.bnn.ca/video/insider-trading-trends-in-canadian-heavyweights~...

In our December Gold Top 20 we said that the real yields were likely to be a key driver for the gold price for the foreseeable future. While we saw some signs that real 5-year yields had peaked and were heading back towards zero, they have rallied back with a vengeance following the hawkish posture of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. On balance, Fed officials now see three rate hikes in 2017.