Following up on my take on Goldman Sachs, investors should consider looking at U.S. banks. Some will do well. Some won’t. So you need a guiding hand. Rob Wessel is one of the best bank analysts in Canada. He just started a firm, Hamilton Capital Partners, that’s offering two bank funds to investors.

I’ve known Rob for a decade; he’s top-drawer and I think he will make money for investors. Read more here.

By the way, one thing I didn’t mention about Goldman is that its stock was up yesterday on a down day and notwithstanding the negative news. Very bullish.

A long-timer reader – I’ll call him Rick ’cause that’s his name – sent me a news release from a group that wants to close the Toronto island airport, which they describe as an environmental and visual blight. The release quotes Porter CEO Robert Deluce telling the media several times over the past couple of years that his airport is profitable, whereas the prospectus for its IPO shows that it isn’t.

Rick sent me the release because I opined that Porter is interesting since it has a lock on the island airport. Rick is a good investor and he says he’ll probably short Porter, but he wants to read the prospectus to confirm his gut instinct.

I don’t know this group or if they get money from Air Canada but I can say that Deluce isn’t necessarily lying. The airline is always adding planes, staff and other expenses as it grows. The revenues lag the expenses. Mature routes are mostly profitable.

Growth often leads to losses in the short term and profits longer term. Deluce, in one quote, says the airline is profitable on a fully allocated basis, by which I presume he means when factoring all this in.

Further to my column on Shoppers Drug Mart, I got the following email from a respected Bay Street analyst:

Dear Mr. Taylor,

I read your article this morning with interest, I’m not however in agreement with your perspective.

While one can argue that changes were needed, in an era of government bailouts (in some circumstances to the tune of millions per employee looking at GM and Chrysler) these wholesale immediate changes to a system that’s been in place for many years without some kind of phase-in strikes me as remarkably unfair particularly as it appears that the Province was not negotiating in good faith. Should the Province give no consideration to Shoppers or Rexall or the pharmacists that pay taxes and employ thousands?

I’m not in agreement with your criticism of Mr. Schreiber’s handling of the situation and that he should have stressed “the potential positives”. … your suggestion that he should just be quiet and take it (for lack of a better phrase) is a weak and spiritless approach.

I have two answers: first, Mr. Schreiber exercised very bad judgment and I’m willing to bet he regrets it.

Second, and more importantly, isn’t it interesting that a professional analyst covering a private sector company actually believes that a broke government should continue to aid and abet drugstore chains earning lavish profits that include kickbacks? Whatever happened to entrepreneurship and hard work as the foundations of capitalism?

As this chart shows, Shoppers stock price was recovering when that column came out on Thursday, pointing out the obvious. Incidentally, Shoppers declined to discuss this with me. Dumb and dumber.

Here’s a technical analysis item from this week’s Globe and Mail. It’s about XTO Energy and predicts good things for the stock. Unfortunately, the technical analyst, Ron Meisels, who’s been around a long time, doesn’t realize that XTO was sold to Exxon. Oops. Maybe he should get his nose of his charts and read the news once in a while.