I'm a retail American investor/swing-trader who has been buying/selling Canadian TSX and "venture" stocks for the past several years. I use an on-line account with the large brokerage house, Charles Schwab. I don't want to offend anyone, but until the past few months the entire Canadian market, including the TSX, has been difficult for American customers of C. Schwab to deal with.

I could not get real-time price quotes or volumes for Canadian stocks from Schwab, unless the Canadian company was also listed on an American exchange. To get the real-time information, I had to go outside Schwab and pay extra.

To give them credit, C Schwab is always improving their service and today my on-line account with them shows real-time prices in Canada (converted to USA dollars) and Canadian volumes.

Great! A lot of the old uncertainty and risk in buying or selling Canadian stocks has been eliminated (at least for one group of American retail investors).

This new ability of many USA retail investors to trade in real-time in Canadian stocks should increase the potential audience for TSX-listed stocks. It represents buying pressure from the USA that was not there in November 2007, and in March 2008, when NOT.V hit its previous highs.

It makes it even more important, in my view, for Noront to be listed on the TSX.

Rek