Manulife, as discussed earlier, is a near perfect barometer of where the TSE and other markets may go. This company believed the nonsense that was widely circulating like no other and, having eaten its own cooking  is very sick. In a sense it is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. So far the bird has not succumbed to the toxic gasses but should it fail to cross the upper trend-line soon, things are starting to look downright ugly! The a-b-c (temporary) correction to say $30 would then not apply. Instead a 5-wave C wave would become more plausible dragging the stock down to $4 or lower. Vector equality between the two down legs would occur approximately in March or April of 2012, but a break below $13.50 or so would suggest the bear case is the right one.

At $11.27 we are essentially on the trend-line. This should be a buy for a $3/$5 gain regardless of where the stock ultimately goes. The all time low at $9 + (since it was demutualized, I believe) is only 2 dollars away and as it is unlikely to go directly through that point the risk is manageable.

This one is either going out of business/ taken over or it has to be a screaming buy. ask your broker. Being the optimist I always am, I would again give it the benefit of the doubt, albeit with a tight stop. More negative talk has come out in the last week than I have ever heard, on almost any stock. Could be good, maybe??

For the record, I worked for Confederation Life just before it filed for bankrupt in 1994, I also worked for Manulife. Both impressed me by their complete and total lack of urgency: their approach to business was/is almost biblical. When they believe, they do so with gusto, but it only takes one single mistake to run a company into the ground,; Manulife’s was that they believed their own marketing  nonsense  with respect to their “income plus” product.

   From an EW point of view, the stock could be in a 5th wave on its way to new lows. However, in that scenario a 4th wave up is still required and this could be good for $3/5 which ,relatively speaking is pretty good. Alternatively, the A-B-C down to $9 was the entire correction in which case the latest move down from $26 is a wave 2 (itself an a-b-c). The next move would then be 3 up.

My gut is that it is still a buy for at least 1/2 year, but only with a very responsible trade, that is with a tight stop-loss a few millimeters below whatever price you buy it at. The latest talk I heard was that it would cost the company an additional 7 billion to buy insurance for the event of another 50% drop in the markets for all its guaranteed products ( the first 10% is self insured). I do not know if numbers like these are real or imagined, but if real that still only represents about 1/3 of its equity.

If you had bought MFC at about $15 you should have been stopped out at about $14 for a loss of $1. Next stop could be around $11 where it might be worth another try. Again a tight stop should be used as this stock is very, very sensitive to the market overall, which is now expected to fall rather significantly seeing that most indexes once again reached the 61.8% retracement as discussed earlier. Also we are approaching that time period where things are more prone to drops, September is the worst of them all.