In his remarks Mr. Swan also noted a structural change that’s causing difficulty for critical segments of the domestic economy, primarily retail, tourism, education and manufacturing, which are suffering the impact of a stronger currency. Australians are reining in their spending, as home prices have cooled. Devastating floods in Queensland have also had a lingering impact, putting another drag on confidence.

The Australian economy contracted by 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised downward its estimate for GDP growth Down Under in 2011, to 2 percent. The RBA followed suit this week, changing its expansion estimate to 2 percent from 3.25 percent. The RBA, the first developed central bank to boost interest rates following the global consensus on monetary policy occasioned by the financial crisis, held its target overnight rate at 4.75 percent this week, among the highest in the world.

Retail sales for June fell 0.1 percent from May’s levels against a forecast of growth of about 0.2 percent. Sales in May were down 0.6 percent from April. Annual retail sales total AUD240 billion and account for a fifth of Australian GDP. A lot of people work in the sector, and it remains an important barometer of domestic economic conditions.

Here’s what the RBA had to say in its statement revealing the downward GDP revision and its interest rate decision:

Growth over 2011 has been revised downwards due to a slower than expected recovery in coal production --a key industry for Australia -- and to a lesser extent a downward revision to consumer spending as domestic and international concerns have weighed on sentiment.  

The medium-term outlook continues to be characterised by the significant pipeline of resource sector investment with a number of large projects already underway and by strong growth in resource exports.

There is a large divergence between the mining and related sectors and the rest of the economy with the cautious behaviour of households, the unwinding of the fiscal stimulus and the high exchange rate weighing on a number of industries.

Although the mining boom remains in full force, growth in non-mining sectors has slowed. World growth is weaker, and overall risks have certainly increased in recent days. But Australia’s economy will continue to ride unprecedented demand from Asia for its natural resources. But the situation is becoming more complicated, as inflation is rising at a pace outside the RBA’s target range. Meanwhile Australia’s trade surplus hit a record AUD22.5 billion  in the 12 months ended Jun. 30, as exports surged 17 percent to AUD298 billion. Iron ore, coal and agricultural exports. Exports to China and Japan, Australia’s top trading partners, rose 39 and 26 percent respectively. Australia’s terms of trade, a measure of export prices relative to import prices, are at a 140-year high.

As I wrote in my recent InvestingDaily.com article, After the Crisis?, trade with Asia helped Australia avoid the Great Recession, and it’s ready to benefit from a huge amount of spending coming from China. As is the case with Canada, demand for its resources has driven a rally in the Australian dollar (the “aussie”).  The Australian resources industry is riding a similar wave of high commodity prices that’s boosted Canada’s national wealth.

And there are roughly USD400 billion in new resource extraction projects planned in Australia over the next five years. Western Australia leads the way with USD242 billion in planned resource and infrastructure projects, with approximately half of that spending concentrated in mining, particularly iron ore. There are a lot of natural gas projects as well. Western Australia will have to support population growth, as mining and construction will need an additional 260,000 workers over the next five years, according to government estimates.

Although there are certainly headwinds, unemployment is low, as is public debt. And the nation’s financial system is also in relatively strong shape.

In his remarks Mr. Swan also noted a structural change that’s causing difficulty for critical segments of the domestic economy, primarily retail, tourism, education and manufacturing, which are suffering the impact of a stronger currency. Australians are reining in their spending, as home prices have cooled. Devastating floods in Queensland have also had a lingering impact, putting another drag on confidence.

The Australian economy contracted by 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised downward its estimate for GDP growth Down Under in 2011, to 2 percent. The RBA followed suit this week, changing its expansion estimate to 2 percent from 3.25 percent. The RBA, the first developed central bank to boost interest rates following the global consensus on monetary policy occasioned by the financial crisis, held its target overnight rate at 4.75 percent this week, among the highest in the world.

Retail sales for June fell 0.1 percent from May’s levels against a forecast of growth of about 0.2 percent. Sales in May were down 0.6 percent from April. Annual retail sales total AUD240 billion and account for a fifth of Australian GDP. A lot of people work in the sector, and it remains an important barometer of domestic economic conditions.

Here’s what the RBA had to say in its statement revealing the downward GDP revision and its interest rate decision:

Growth over 2011 has been revised downwards due to a slower than expected recovery in coal production --a key industry for Australia -- and to a lesser extent a downward revision to consumer spending as domestic and international concerns have weighed on sentiment.  

The medium-term outlook continues to be characterised by the significant pipeline of resource sector investment with a number of large projects already underway and by strong growth in resource exports.

There is a large divergence between the mining and related sectors and the rest of the economy with the cautious behaviour of households, the unwinding of the fiscal stimulus and the high exchange rate weighing on a number of industries.

Although the mining boom remains in full force, growth in non-mining sectors has slowed. World growth is weaker, and overall risks have certainly increased in recent days. But Australia’s economy will continue to ride unprecedented demand from Asia for its natural resources. But the situation is becoming more complicated, as inflation is rising at a pace outside the RBA’s target range. Meanwhile Australia’s trade surplus hit a record AUD22.5 billion  in the 12 months ended Jun. 30, as exports surged 17 percent to AUD298 billion. Iron ore, coal and agricultural exports. Exports to China and Japan, Australia’s top trading partners, rose 39 and 26 percent respectively. Australia’s terms of trade, a measure of export prices relative to import prices, are at a 140-year high.

As I wrote in my recent InvestingDaily.com article, After the Crisis?, trade with Asia helped Australia avoid the Great Recession, and it’s ready to benefit from a huge amount of spending coming from China. As is the case with Canada, demand for its resources has driven a rally in the Australian dollar (the “aussie”).  The Australian resources industry is riding a similar wave of high commodity prices that’s boosted Canada’s national wealth.

And there are roughly USD400 billion in new resource extraction projects planned in Australia over the next five years. Western Australia leads the way with USD242 billion in planned resource and infrastructure projects, with approximately half of that spending concentrated in mining, particularly iron ore. There are a lot of natural gas projects as well. Western Australia will have to support population growth, as mining and construction will need an additional 260,000 workers over the next five years, according to government estimates.

Although there are certainly headwinds, unemployment is low, as is public debt. And the nation’s financial system is also in relatively strong shape.

David Dittman is the editor of Canadian Edge and is a regular contributor on www.investingdaily.com. 

The response from leaders in affected industries hasn’t been so clinical. But if the US experience is any guide, these environmental regulations--which aren’t a done deal--won’t be as debilitating to business as some interested parties would have you believe.

From an economic perspective, the wisdom of Australia assuming a leadership role on greenhouse gas emissions is questionable; the plan involves industries that have driven the country’s economy for a decade. But the ambitious plan would cut emissions in one of the developed world’s top polluters to at least 5 percent of 2000 levels by 2020. Nevertheless, the “Clean Energy Plan” advanced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard appears relatively benign.

Beginning Jul. 1, 2012, Australia’s 500 biggest polluters will pay a tax of AUD23 (about USD24.65) per metric ton of carbon emitted. The carbon tax will increase by 2.5 percent per year, plus inflation. In 2015 this scheme will expire and the market will set the price of carbon emissions and emissions credits. At that point, Australia will be home to the largest cap-and-trade scheme outside Europe.

According to this proposal, the market price of carbon credits would decline as businesses reduce their carbon output. In theory, such a regimen would incentivize efforts to improve energy efficiency.

The plan also includes measures to soften the blow to business. The government would set aside AUD9.2 billion over the first three years to help industries adjust to the new tax, including AUD5.5 billion for upgrading coal-fired power plants that aren’t closed down; AUD1.3 billion for coal mines to target methane emissions; and an additional AUD1.3 billion to create jobs at the mines most affected by the tax.

High-emission exporters, such as steel, aluminum and pulp and paper makers, would get free carbon permits to assist them while they undertake initiatives to reduce pollution. The proposal grants the steel industry an additional AUD300 million in “adjustment payments.”

The government would also purchase and decommission the worst coal-fired power plants--about 2,000 megawatts of generation capacity--including the controversial Hazelwood power plant, reputed to be Australia’s least carbon-efficient power station.

With AUD10 billion in start-up funding, a newly established Clean Energy Finance Corp will invest in companies seeking to get green energy projects off the ground. Another new body, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, would receive AUD3.2 billion to support the development of renewable energy.

The proposal excludes fuel for most business and personal transportation from the carbon tax, but owners of heavy transport vehicles will face levies in 2014. Domestic aviation fuel taxes would also increase by an amount equal to the carbon tax.

Average assistance to households under the plan is forecast to offset the cost-of-living increases that will result as carbon-tax-paying polluters pass on costs to customers. This will form the cornerstone of Gillard’s defense of her Clean Energy Plan, which faces considerable public opposition.

The carbon tax, should it be enacted, would land squarely on coal-fired power plants that produce 77 percent of the country’s electricity and iron and mineral mining companies that account for 35 percent of Australian exports.

Uncover what stocks are likely to do well under the government’s compensation scheme by signing up for a risk-free trial subscription to Personal Finance.

Market research firm IDC forecast global smartphone unit growth of 55 percent in 2011 and for worldwide sales to approach a billion by the end of 2015. Smartphone makers shipped 305 million units in 2010, which should rise to 472 million this year. According to IDC, “The smartphone floodgates are wide open.”

Right now Research in Motion (TSX: RIM, NSDQ: RIMM)--Canada’s most important technology company--seems to be foundering.

It’s now been several months of profit warnings, product delays and a sliding share price for the company that essentially created the smartphone way back in the 20th century. Drama from this huge-money game spilled out onto the Internet this week, as a “high level” executive from RIM leaked an unsigned “open letter” to the tech-centric blog Boy Genius Report that eviscerated the company’s top leadership for failing to keep up with the times.

RIM’s stock price dropped to below USD29 in June 2011, a far cry from the peak it reached in June 2008 near USD145. Shareholder value has been cut in half in 2011. In mid-June management announced a second-quarter revenue forecast of USD4.2 billion to USD4.8 billion, with earnings per share of USD0.75 to USD1.05 excluding one-time charges; both estimates are below Wall Street expectations.

Much of the criticism leveled at RIM focuses on its leadership. The company is run by the guy who founded the company and now serves as one of its co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis, and the guy he hired to help him run the business, Jim Balsillie. Mr. Lazaridis and Mr. Balsillie also co-chair RIM’s board of directors.

The Toronto Globe & Mail recently reported that, finally caving to outside pressures, the co-CEOs/co-chairmen have surrendered somewhat, agreeing to the creation of an independent committee of the board that will study the bipolar arrangement.

RIM introduced its first BlackBerry in 1999, turning founder Mike Lazaridis’ desire to send and receive e-mail on a cell phone into a communications revolution. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has since made a mockery of RIM’s mockery of its desire to put a computer on a phone. And, in turn, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), the search firm that’s redefined computing, is now causing headaches for its competitors while casting a monster shadow over a vulnerable Apple with its Android “software stack” for mobile devices.

RIM’s setup provides an easy, unfavorable comparison to its recent better, Apple, and its seeming one-man show, Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs’ health is a perpetual concern, however, and he has recently been on a leave of absence to receive medical treatment. It’s worth noting, too, that the biggest threat to Apple’s new era, Google, once struggled with the question of dual leadership, which resulted in Eric Schmidt’s successful run as CEO.

As Jim Fink astutely points out in his Investing Daily article, What's Wrong with Research in Motion? The Answer is Not Apple's iPhone, RIM’s descent from dominance to desperation in a matter of months is as much about vicissitudes of consumer demand and investor sentiment as it is about management.

Yes, accepting the anonymous dispatch to BGR.com at face value Mr. Lazaridis and Mr. Balsillie have fallen out of step with end-users, and the challenge to recapture their imagination is undeniably difficult. But this is far from a question of competence--imagination, perhaps.

A business with no debt, billions in cash and a still-formidable market position--including dominance of the corporate market, where its secure, proprietary e-mail platform is a major plus--is a solid one. It may not be spectacular anymore, but that’s not what we’re focused on at Canadian Edge. We’re about building wealth over the long term. That’s about locking in high, sustainable yields at solid valuations.

RIM is likely a long way off from declaring its first dividend, but at these levels there’s a compelling value story, even potential for considerable upside should it become the target of a takeover attempt or its still-respectable development team hit the mark with its next smartphone or tablet.

RIM, as management argued in its response to the anonymous letter posted at BGR.com, has CADD3 billion in cash, generated net income of CAD695 million and grew considerably in international markets in the first quarter--67 percent year over year. It shipped 100 smartphones per minute, 24 hours per day, during the first 12 weeks of 2011, a total of 13.2 million BlackBerrys.

It may not be as fast-growing in North America as it once was, but RIM and its BlackBerry still form a ubiquitous bramble.

For complete, up-to-date coverage on Research In Motion as well as recommendations on over 150 Canadian high-yielding trusts and corporations, sign up for a risk-free trial subscription to Canadian Edge.

David Dittman is the editor of Canadian Edge and is a regular contributor on www.investingdaily.com.

Most Canadian stocks have lost ground since the market’s most recent peak in early May.

Why the pullback? Simply, the memory of 2008 is all too fresh. Since that crash every dip in stocks has many investors asking the questions listed above--and no wonder. The financial media continue to trumpet every pullback as the potential beginning of a greater crash.

Market psychology was much the same in spring and early summer 2010. Then, investors also worried about softer economic growth and global credit concerns as precursors to a steep drop for stocks.

Last year’s downturn eventually reversed by mid-summer, and stocks moved on to new post-crash highs by late April 2011. Rising prices calmed fears of a reprise of 2008, as investors again focused on growth and yield.

That’s pretty much what I expect to see this time around. For one thing, sovereign debt crises--whether in Greece or the US--don’t have the potential to sow panic the way the mass default of mortgage-backed securities did in late 2008.

With government bonds everyone knows where exposure lies. As we discuss in the July 15, 2011, article, The Debt Ceiling: Failure Makes Everything More Expensive, available to all Investing Daily readers, a real US default would no doubt hurt the US economy, not to mention the country’s credibility. But there would be no surprises about where exposure lies.

That’s a very stark contrast with the mortgage-backed security crisis in late 2008, when bombs went off repeatedly in places suspected by few, if anyone at all.

As for economic growth, for all the sturm and drang in the financial media, it’s still running basically the way it has since mid-2009. That is very lumpy and uneven with real pockets of weakness. But it’s growing nonetheless. Meanwhile, 1970s-style inflation remains impossible, due to very slack employment conditions.

In 2010 many investors were convinced Chinese growth was on the verge of slowing rapidly, and prices for commodities, including oil, dropped in anticipation of lower demand. That didn’t last long, as the world’s most populous nation soon drew down inventories of key supplies and ramped up imports once again.

The current selloff may go on for a while longer. But the bottom line is credit, economic and market conditions just aren’t anywhere close to as dire as they were in mid-2008, before the crash unfolded. That means we’re likely to see a third leg of the post-crash bull market begin sometime this summer.

The Canadian economy as a whole is also far less leveraged than the US. The country’s federal budget is on track for balance in the next couple years. Debt has risen at the household level. But 69 percent of Canadian homeowners have at least 20 percent equity in their homes. Those just aren’t the right conditions for a wholesale crash as happened in the US.

Even the Canadian dollar is no longer acting like the commodity-price proxy of yesteryear. Despite a sharp drop in oil prices last month and worries about slowing growth, the loonie held above parity versus the US dollar.

As for the individual companies themselves, many of the companies we track for our Canadian Edge portfolio operate in recession-resistant niches that proved their ability to generate consistent revenues during the 2008 crash and subsequent recession. And, mindful of the potential for a relapse, managers of these companies have used the better economy of the past couple years to further cut risk by adding stable assets.

2008 proved that so long as a company remains solid on the inside, its stock will eventually recover any decline due solely to market factors.

So long as the fundamentals underpinning the Canadian economy remain healthy we are going to want to continue holding on to Canadian stocks offering attractive dividend yields and healthy growth. (To learn more about high-yielding Canadian stocks sign up for a free report) Remember, this is a high-percentage strategy that worked in 2008. It will work again in 2011.

Penn West Energy Trust (TSX: PWT-U, NYSE: PWE) was going to spend a lot of time and money in Alberta this year, even before provincial authorities finally announced its plan to win back some of the oil and gas exploration and production activity it lost to Saskatchewan and British Columbia in recent years. But changes Premier Ed Stelmach and his eager-to-survive government describe in “Energizing Investment: A Framework to Improve Alberta’s Natural Gas and Conventional Oil Competitiveness” will make the biggest conventional oil and gas trust’s efforts in the province a lot more worthwhile.

On March 11 Alberta announced it would essentially undo what’s left of an October 2007 royalty regime makeover. As of Jan. 1, 2011:

• the top royalty rate on conventional oil wells will be 40 percent, down from 50;
• the top royalty rate on natural gas wells will be 36 percent, down from 50 percent;
• the minimum royalty rate for conventional oil and natural gas wells will remain 5 percent.

The current 5 percent first-year rate for new conventional oil and natural gas wells, which was to expire Mar. 31, 2011, is now permanent. The government will announce new royalty curves--the price levels at which specific rates kick in--by May 31.

The sliding scale for oil sands royalties--from 1 percent to 9 percent pre-payout and 25 percent to 40 percent post-payout, depending on the price of oil--is unchanged. The oil sands base royalty starts at 1 percent and increases for every dollar West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude is above USD55 per barrel, to a maximum of 9 percent when oil is USD120 or higher. The net royalty starts at 25 percent and increases for every dollar oil is priced above USD55 per barrel to 40 percent when oil is USD120 or higher.

Alberta has also made a familiar commitment to reduce regulatory burdens. But it also emphasized the importance to the province’s long-term economic health of exploiting its unconventional natural gas resources. The government introduced incentives to encourage adoption of new technologies that unlocked vast shale gas reserves in the US, backing its earnestness with cash; this is one type of problem where simply “throwing money at it” is likely to work.

The new royalty regime itself is an acknowledgement that front-end investment--particularly where innovative extraction techniques are absolutely critical to success, as in the long-lived Pembina field--in conventional production often demands new technology. “Energizing Investment” includes a pledge to explore still other ways “to recognize and account for the higher costs of new and advanced technologies needed to develop mature conventional oil and gas plays and unconventional natural gas.”

Finally, the government says it will try to get out of the way of new applications for upstream development and will continue to work with industry and academia to further research into such technologies.

All told, the greatest immediate impact--once the new rates kick in on Jan. 1, 2011--will come to producers and drillers in the Cardium light oil formation of the bountiful Pembina field, a play rejuvenated by improved drilling techniques.

Since late 2009 Penn West has forecast capital expenditures of anywhere between CAD700 million and CAD900 million for 2010. CEO Bill Andrew told Bloomberg News yesterday that his company would double its planned capital spending in Alberta. If Andrew’s commitment proves true, two-thirds of this budget will be directed to the province. This ratio would bring Penn West’s capital outlay ratio in line with the geographic concentration of its assets: Two-thirds of Penn West’s assets are located in Alberta.

Penn West controls more than half a million net acres in the province, what it describes as “a dominant land, production and infrastructure position in West Central Alberta including the emerging Cardium horizontal multi-frac plays at Pembina, Willesden Green, Leafland, Garrington and Sylvan Lake.” Recent drilling activity has shown much higher efficiency because of what’s known as horizontal multi-fracture technology. During its February 18 conference call to discuss fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 earnings management said Penn West would drill 250 to 300 net wells in 2010--most of them concentrated in these development opportunities.

Management described the 2010 capital budget as “a moving target,” dependent on the success of new initiatives. It’s safe to say the budget is likely to move Alberta-ward.

How to Ride the Long Cycle

If you still watch CNBC it’s probably because of the reality network’s all-too-infrequent sessions with the director of floor operations for UBS, Art Cashin. Art himself has become part of the drama, we must concede, what with “Dow 10,000” hats a little more than 10 years ago, though credit must be given to a wit that would pull one of those hats out again in late 2008, when that widely watched index of 30 US blue chips lurched over the magical but essentially meaningless barrier on the way down.

Art’s put in a lot time on the Street, so he has the on-the-ground experience through a couple turns in what he calls “the long cycle.” The iteration Art describes comprises alternating, 17.6-year periods of bull and bear markets. For example, the years from 1982 to 2000 constitute one bull cycle. Before that, from the apogee of the Great Society until the Reagan Revolution, was a long slog. And before that was the post-World War II boom that left the US in charge of the world.

Stories about “long cycles” are popping up more and more in the broader media, in last Thursday’s Toronto Globe and Mail, for example. The recurrence of such cycles--of varying lengths--is a powerful observation, one the increased study and understanding of which hopefully won’t distort its predictive value for what the next decades has in store for investors. What we have, in this construct, is a secular bear trend that, according to a more than a century’s worth of data, probably has about another decade to run.

At the same time, the problem Professor James Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego, describes also explains why we’re in a long-term bull market for energy, particularly crude oil:

University of Leeds Professor Joyce Dargay and New York University Professor Dermot Gately have a new research paper suggesting that projections from the DOE, IEA, and OPEC are underestimating the challenges ahead for meeting world oil demand.

Research by Baumeister and Peersman and Hughes, Knittel, and Sperling, among others, has documented that oil demand appears to have been much less responsive to price over the last decade than it had been in the 1970s. My recent study in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity…concluded that this decrease in the elasticity is one of the key factors behind the oil-price run-up of 2007-2008. The surprise to markets in 2008 was that even $100 oil wouldn't be enough to prevent world demand from growing above 85 million barrels a day, and much more than 85 million barrels a day simply wasn’t going to be produced at that time.

Professor Hamilton relies on Dargay and Gately for the money quote:

[C]ompare two decades in which the price of crude oil has quintupled: 1973-84 and 1998-2008. After the price increases of the 1970’s, per-capita demand fell by 19% for the OECD and by 13% for the world as a whole. In the past decade, with oil price increases similar to those of the 1970’s, per-capita demand fell only 3% in the OECD; worldwide it actually increased, by 4%.

Economic activity will not grind to zero during the next decade. Rather, in the developed world spending decisions will be more focused on essentials. Frivolity, as a recent Gallup poll suggests, is out. Meanwhile, as the response to the mid-2000s shock indicates, demand from emerging Asia means we’ve entered a new era of permanently elevated oil prices. This is illustrated as well by the fact that oil hovers near USD80 per barrel amid what can only be described as a tentative economic recovery. And in the long term, as Professor Hamilton wonders, the world is going to have an extremely difficult time ramping up to 138 million barrels a day of production by 2030.

Resources such as Canada’s oil sands--and the conventional but hard-to-produce assets in Penn West’s Cardium play--are of ever increasing importance to North American energy supply and therefore to the world.

A New Investment Class

Cut-less or not, conversions continue to be universally bullish for income trusts this year. All the market requires, it seems, is just clarification of post-conversion dividends.

Crescent Point Energy (TSX: CPG, OTC: CSCTF) set a tone for oil and gas producer trusts with its decision to convert last year without cutting its distribution. It’s subsequently grown its production by more than 50 percent because the market loved its post-2011 dividend policy and virtually doubled the share price, allowing it to aggressively make acquisitions using its own stock.

And momentum for preserving dividends with trust conversions is still increasing. Paramount Energy Trust (TSX: PMT-U, OTC: PMGYF) and Pengrowth Energy Trust (TSX: PGF-U, NYSE: PGH) announced a cut-less conversions last week, along with solid fourth-quarter results, featuring payout ratios of just 48 and 41 percent, respectively.

That brings the number of no-cut conversions thus far in the oil and gas sector to five, versus one reduction and two eliminations. That, of course, doesn’t mean that every trust will elect to hold its distribution steady. In fact, some management teams still seem stuck on the idea that they have to cut in order to preserve operating cash flow for growth.

Again, as long as a producer trust has solid and undervalued assets under the ground, we’re going to stick with it, no matter what management does on the dividend. No-cut conversions, however, make the process easier and considerably more profitable in the near term.

Outside the energy patch, the servicer to the financial services industry Davis + Henderson Income Fund (TSX: DHF-U, OTC: DHIFF) fell sharply for two days after it announced a larger-than-expected 34.7 percent post-conversion dividend cut. The units, however, have since rebounded even more dramatically and now stand nearly 5 percent above their pre-announcement price on March 2.

Bird Construction Income Fund (TSX: BDT-U, OTC: BIRDF) became the 23rd distribution-paying Canadian income trust to announce a no-cut conversion, announcing it will make the change by the end of 2010 while holding its annual dividend rate of CAD1.80 a share steady.

All this bodes well for the remaining trust conversions, the vast majority of which will take place between now and the end of 2010. But the really bullish implications are for the post-conversion era, when trusts are no longer trusts but the leaders of a new breed of high-yielding equity never before seen.

These companies pay taxes--but also outsized dividends that dwarf those of the typical US corporation. Rather than enrich themselves with bloated salaries and perks, the managers’ interests are firmly attached to those of ordinary shareholders. And as the growing wave of low and no-cut conversions proves, they’ve discovered it’s possible to pay out big and grow their businesses by efficient use of capital.

It’s certainly not rocket science that investors need yield more than ever before. And these companies have realized they can harness that demand to issue low-cost equity that can fund everything from acquisitions to asset construction. Asset growth, in turn, means cash flow growth, which means a greater ability to pay dividends.

Dividends are paid not from traditional earnings per share but from distributable cash flow after taxes and capital spending. Dividends are lower than they could have been had Canadian trusts maintained their favorable tax status. And yields are going to be lower than they’ve been in previous years, mainly because investors won’t require a yield premium due to misplaced fears about 2011.

Yields will still be multiples higher, however, than the kind of conventional stocks and bonds most advisors try to shove into clients’ accounts. They’ll also be paid in Canadian dollars, a currency that should continue to appreciate against the US dollar and also which provides protection from future inflation. That’s because it tracks the price of energy, which is certain to be at the root of any inflation swing.

Finally, US investors who hold these investments in IRAs and other tax-deferred retirement accounts are in line for an effective 17.6 percent dividend increase. While we continue to believe dividends paid by Canadian trusts and corporations should already be exempt from the 15 percent withholding of dividends under the Fifth Protocol of the US-Canada Tax Treaty, Canada looks set to continue withholding until the trusts convert to corporations, and start paying taxes in Canada.

Whatever the case, however, by the end of this year, US investors’ IRAs will no longer be withheld. That means 15 cents per dollar of dividends added back to their accounts, an effective 17.6 percent dividend increase for owners of converting trusts.

Ultimately, what we’re talking about here is a new class of dividend-paying stocks paying rising yields from a base of between 6 and 12 percent. And based on performance of US equivalents, the former oil and gas producer trusts will pay out in the teens when energy prices perk up again.

Those yields will rise further for US investors whenever the Canadian dollar gains ground. Unlike dividends paid by any other foreign stock or bond, they’ll be exempt from cross-border withholding. And there will be nothing more complicated than a 1099 to be filed, even for investors who hold them outside of IRAs.

Those who hold these investments through their transition from trusts to corporations will realize substantial capital gains, very likely in the neighborhood of 60 percent. But even those who come later to the party will be buying first and foremost into strong businesses with powerful growth prospects, as management continues to take advantage of opportunities and the Canadian economy surges forward.

Finally, investors can rest assured that these are companies that have proven themselves in the worst possible conditions over the past several years. Not only were they stress-tested by the economy and credit markets. But they also thrived despite the Canadian government’s restrictions on how they raised capital.

That’s something no US company had to go through. Now they’re set to benefit from what will soon be the lowest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Alberta-based oil and gas producers, meanwhile, will get a double bonus, as the provincial government rolls back royalty rates to get business going again.

It all adds up to a windfall gains this year and hefty yields and total returns thereafter--all with much less risk than investing in most US sectors. That’s all the reason anyone should need to buy Canada this year, particularly if you haven’t already.

Act Now

Are you serious about investing in the Canadian story? Join Roger Conrad in sunny San Diego, California, April 23-24 for the 2010 Wealth Society Member Summit. You’ll have a chance to sit down with Roger one-on-one to talk about where to find the best ideas to generate total returns as Canadian income trusts convert to high-yielding corporations and how to position your portfolio for the year ahead.

Join Roger and his colleagues GS Early, Elliott Gue, Yiannis Mostrous, and Benjamin Shepherd at the historic Hotel del Coronado--one of the top 10 resorts in the world according to USA Today, one of the top 20 hotel/spas in the world according to Travel + Leisure, and the No. 2 place in the world to get married, according to the Travel Channel.

And on April 23-24, Coronado Island will also be the best place in the world for relaxation and profit. We’re expecting 72 degrees, sun and fun. You may find all details at www.InvestingSummit.com.

Call 1-800-832-2330 (between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. EST Monday through Friday) or go online now to reserve your seat at the table. Space is limited.



David Dittman is Managing Editor of Personal Finance.