If you were in the market for comic relief, all you needed to do was to tune into Canada’s business coverage the day after the federal election.

Report On Business (ROB) TV desperately tried to put an election spin on their reporting, but it was all in vain. The economic geniuses the station interviewed mostly shrugged off Paul Martin’s triumph from a financial perspective, as one would have expected.

An anchor pronounced that ROB would be weighing in on the “impact” of the election, then promptly reported that the TSX index was up 3.41 points midway in the first trading day after the election. Yes, that was 3.41, not 341 points.

In terms of investor sentiment, that’s hardly even a shrug.

It was also reported that the loonie had shown some strength the morning after the election, but it was nothing significant and, as news, that too was a real shrugger.

Of course, while the election results were drawing a collective yawn, we were once again being upstaged by the Americans.

All eyes in the Canadian investment community were fixed on the action south of the border with anticipation of an interest rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. jobs report.

Let’s face it. The only election Bay Street really cares about is the U.S. election in November that could have a real impact on the financial markets.

ROB’s preoccupation with an election that hardly registered with the markets was curious considering that on election night, with Martin’s Liberals already declared a winner by minority, Canada’s financial network was replaying its afternoon Squeeze Play program that was setting the scene for an election that was all but over.

But that’s not surprising for a network that seems to specialize in useless and repetitive information, and can’t carry the microphone of its polished American counterpart, CNBC.

Only in Canada, eh?

* HEAVY HITTER: I don’t believe there’s a fund manager anywhere with more clout than John Embry, the grizzled gold guru who manages the precious minerals portfolio at Sprott Investment Management.

Embry, president of Sprott, is capable of moving stocks single-handedly, as he did recently as a guest on ROB-TV’s Market Call program.

On a day when gold stocks were getting pounded and the price of gold was down more than $8 US, Embry lit a fire under three obscure mining stocks when he made them his top three picks at the end of the show.

North Atlantic Resources (NAC-TSX) ran from $1.26 to $1.47, a gain of 16.7 per cent, within three minutes of Embry’s naming of the company; QGX (QGX-TSXV) ran from $2.65 to $2.79, a gain of 5.3 per cent, in about one minute after it was touted; and Committee Bay Resources (CBR-TSXV) ran from $1.75 to $1.88, a gain of 8.3 per cent, in about two minutes.

The Sprott Gold & Precious Minerals Fund is up about 67 per cent in the past year, despite losing more than 20 per cent year to date.

Embry, who has been following precious metals stocks for three decades, had to eat some crow from some callers over some recommendations that have tanked in recent months.

He even apologized to one caller, but believes gold and silver stocks are in the early phases of a long-term bull market.

* GAS JOCKEY: When Barron’s newspaper recently interviewed its panel of 11 U.S. market experts for their outlooks and picks, one Canadian company, Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ-TSX), was among the table-pounding stocks.

Oscar Schafer, president of OSS Capital Management, gave a bullish outlook for natural gas and singled out CNQ as the head of class.

“The company is financially savvy with a lot of insider ownership,” Schafer told Barron’s, referring to major stakeholder Murray Edwards. “It is growing its reserves by investing 10 per cent a year while using half its cash flow to do so.

“It’s investing (the other half) in an oilsands project (the Heritage project) that is expected to have a 15-per- cent internal rate of return, using $23 US oil. In a world of depleting oil reserves, oilsands is one of the long-lived assets.

“The cost of extracting oil from them has gone down. You’re paying nothing for this project, which could be a home run.”

Stock in CNQ, which recently traded at $39, has leaped 50 per cent since last September.

HOT STOCK: Sirit Inc.
SI-TSX $1.20
Up 36 cents (+42.9%) on 7.4 million shares (for week ending July 2).
When one of the market’s lightweights reveals a cosy relationship with a heavyweight, investors raise their glasses and their bids. Vancouver-based SIRIT busted out to a 52-week high on massive volume when it announced a collaboration on radio-frequency identification technologies with big-time chip maker Intel (INTC-Nasdaq). SIRIT has soared 140 per cent in six weeks.

COLD STOCK: General Minerals
GNM-TSX $1.12
Down 33 cents (-22.8%) on 33,800 shares (for week ending July 2).
Late last year, Vancouver-based General Minerals was one of the biggest movers in a mini-boom in junior mining stocks, tripling in a matter of weeks to a high of $3.25. But the stock has since given back most of its gains with the junior miners out of favour. The stock hasn’t been able to sustain upward momentum despite recent encouraging exploration results from silver/copper projects in Arizona and Bolivia.

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)