8 Responses to “Tech Talk for Thursday February 12th 2026”

1. Paul Says:
   February 12th, 2026 at 2:24 pm

   Don & Jon, thank you for still providing these awesome daily notes ! So useful and appreciated.

   To the regulars who used to generously post here aIot I would love to hear your current thoughts on the market etc.
   Its been a good few years tho I’m transitioning to retirement and wanting more hands off. Anyone else in this boat ?
   Thanks.

2. Bman/Van Says:
   February 12th, 2026 at 5:29 pm

   Hi Paul

   Nice to see there is still life out there on this page. Larry has been very quiet as well as a number of other contributors.

   From my perspective the market is consolidating some of the gains from 2025 and trying to work out where will be the “hot” spots to allocate capital and the big losers. Not expecting a resolution to this fog until Mar or April although it does have the hallmarks from last year Feb-Apr range.

   I too and transitioning to retirement (not by choice but circumstances are what they are) so working two streams one of active and the other is boosting income / hands off approach. While the real deals are not expected to arrive till summer in my estimation, building the shopping list to next round of purchases. This week has been busy will new equity issues (GEI, AP.UN, etc…) probably will be plenty more in the months and weeks to come.

   Thanks

3. Neil ON Says:
   February 13th, 2026 at 10:57 am

   Hi Paul and Bman,

   I agree with Bman on the consolidation phase. Market has had a nice run before the year started.

4. Paul Says:
   February 13th, 2026 at 11:58 am

   Thank you Bman and Neil. I really appreciate your thoughts and reminder of patience. Bman I hope your retirement circumstances (not by choice) are ok and most importantly that your health is good. I wasn’t sure how I’d deal with retirement as I loved working but it’s been much more enjoyable than I imagined including a lot of repairing things myself vs hiring out. Re: market, I’ve been fortunate to be mainly in some stronger etfs that keep chugging along their 21 days w/visits to their 50 as a chace to add (XDIV, ZEB, WXM etc). Individual energy and pipeline positions have also been good. I’ve also made some poorer choices in riskier tech names (where I thought I was clever) with the main downside my curiosity to over check them which in the end hasn’t been worth the time tradeoff. My focus now is to reduce these and add to the steady less volatile areas and go more hands off. Any favorite etfs or positions for this approach ? Thanks again.

5. Bman/Van Says:
   February 13th, 2026 at 7:49 pm

   Hi Paul

   While there are a number of different ways to get income, my current favorites are individual stocks dividends, private equity and structured notes. I am staying clear of the private credit as that would include too much illiquid stuff in the portfolio. For the latter 2 there is not a lot of work one can do as much of the makeup and structure is not public. However, I have had more success with the structured notes providing a decent income or return while protecting the downside and principle. Like all investments, there are better times than others to get notes, but one can usually achieve an income of 6-12% on the principle. There are some ETF’s that act similar to notes, but those I am not familiar with. Supplementing some of the income I will also sell covered calls on a couple of stocks which don’t pay dividends to enhance the portfolio. Again if options are not your cup of team and you are weak at the knee to risk this is likely not for you.

6. Paula Says:
   February 15th, 2026 at 4:49 pm

   Hello All, yes good to see some signs of life on this site. I tried posting in January but did not see any response so was starting to resign myself to not seeing any comments. I still check in to read Don and Jon’s observations and am grateful for their perspective. Still miss Ron/BC…

   Here is what I said on January 6th:
   For the sake of opening up some discussion, here are some thoughts:
   It seems that CNR.TO is stabilizing; has room to move up to test some resistance levels; if it can break above, there is lots of room overhead.
   TD and RY had all time highs today but closed lower. Maybe they will have some kind of correction and provide an entry opportunity.
   XBM.TO got away from me. I didn’t have the patience to stay with it and got out way too soon.
   I was going to send charts but I can’t figure out how to do it with the new stockcharts format. I need to figure that out when I have more patience…

   I retired last year but don’t have a pension other than CPP/OAC so I have been building up dividend paying positions over the last few years. I used to use options to generate income but decided to retire from doing that just before COVID hit. I like the BMO covered call etfs eg: ZWB, ZWC and ZWT. I realize that owning the underlying in a trending market will work out better but I would rather have the income and if you have a large enough position acquired over time, there are also gains. I am too concerned with liquidity to consider private equity but have recently started a position in BAM as a proxy for private equity.

7. Paul Says:
   February 16th, 2026 at 11:34 am

   Thanks Dman and Paula. I really appreciate your replies. Great call Paula on CNR in January. Happy Family Day.

8. Bman/Van Says:
   February 16th, 2026 at 6:35 pm

   Hi Paula

   CNR did base around 129-130 which is a good price to get shares at this support level. While the dividend is not huge, it’s consistent and decent enough while you wait for the price to recover ~170-180ish. All the banks are trading at the top end of their historical lvls (or higher on a few) so for me I am sitting on the sidelines waiting for them to become more reasonable like they were in 2024. It does make it challenging to find reasonable priced companies with good and growing dividends at this time. Tech and materials look interesting, but think one needs to wait to summer to see where everything settles.

   Larry any thoughts on tech?

   Thanks