Canadian Wealth Advisor

PRIMEWEST ENERGY TRUST $25.10 (Toronto symbol PWI.UN; SI Rating: Speculative) is now the subject of a $26.75 per unit cash takeover bid from subsidiaries of the Abu Dhabi National Energy Co.

After merging with Shiningbank Energy Trust (a recommendation of Canadian Wealth Advisor) in July, 2007, PrimeWest became Canada’s seventh-largest energy trust. We liked its strong cash flow and low payout …read more »

PRIMEWEST ENERGY TRUST $21.93 (Toronto symbol PWI.UN; SI Rating: Speculative) is a Calgary-based oil and gas royalty trust with operations in both western Canada and Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming in the U.S.

PrimeWest’s revenues rose 28.2% in the three months ended June 30, 2007, to $173.1 million from $135 million a year earlier. Cash flow per unit rose 8.4%, to …read more »

The Bank of Canada held interest rates steady at 4.25% at its April meeting. The rate has remained stable since May, 2006.

The Bank did note that core inflation has increased faster than expected, and will likely rise above its target rate of 2% in coming months.

Core inflation excludes eight volatile components identified by the Bank of Canada, including gasoline, fuel …read more »

At one time, mutual funds within a particular ‘fund family’ often shared some key investment characteristic, such as a conservative or aggressive investment approach, or a stress on value as opposed to growth.

However, due to trends in the mutual-funds industry such as corporate mergers and takeovers, and more aggressive marketing, a fund’s membership in a fund family now has little …read more »

Stock market indexes in Canada and the U.S. are up only 4% or so this year. But that disguises the underlying strength of the global economy.

U.S. growth was an annulized 2.5% in the second quarter of this year. While that’s down from 5.6% in the first quarter, it’s still strong considering that the U.S. Federal Reserve has continued to raise …read more »

Income trusts as a group are more speculative than most investors realize. They carry a lot of hidden risk, due to the way they are organized as investments, and to the way they are valued by investors.

Share prices of many companies rise in price when they announce plans to convert into income trusts. But that leaves a lot of room …read more »

We’ve recommended a select number of closed-end mutual funds over the years in Canadian Wealth Advisor as a great way to buy high-quality assets at a discount.

As we’ve said, many closed-end funds eventually liquidate, or transform themselves into open-end funds. When that happens, much of the discount disappears overnight. The fund’s shares may then jump up to 30% or more.

A …read more »

At one time, mutual funds within a particular ‘fund family’ often shared some key investment characteristic, such as a conservative or aggressive investment approach, or a stress on value as opposed to growth.

However, due to trends in the mutual-funds industry such as corporate mergers and takeovers, and more aggressive marketing, a fund’s membership in a fund family now has little …read more »

In evaluating investments, many investors focus on what we’d call ‘investment outputs’, such as earnings, dividends, cash flow, return on equity, sales growth and so on. These are all important, of course, but you shouldn’t focus on them to the exclusion of what you might call ‘investment inputs’, such as the factors we use in assigning our Successful Investor quality …read more »

The Bank of Canada raised interest rates in March by 0.25%, to 3.75% from 3.50%. That was the fifth consecutive monthly increase.

The increase was largely in response to rising inflation. The consumer price index or “All-items” index was up by an annualized 2.2% in February, down from a 2.8% rise in January. The index includes 600 items.

There are other measures …read more »