How To Invest
In addition, Pat thinks then beginner investors should cultivate two important qualities: a healthy sense of skepticism and patience.
Investors should approach all investments with a healthy sense of skepticism. This can help keep you out of fraudulent stocks that masquerade as high-quality stocks. It will also keep you out of legally operated, but poorly managed, companies that promise more than they can possibly deliver.
If you are a new investor, you should also realize that losing patience can cause you to sell your best choices right before a big rise. All too often, investors buy a promising stock just as it enters a period of price stagnation. Even the best-performing stocks run into these unpredictable phases from time to time. They move mainly sideways in a wide range for months or years before their next big rise begins. (Stock brokers often refer to these stocks as “dead money.”)
If you lack patience, you run a big risk of selling your best choices in the midst of one of these phases, prior to the next big move upward. If you lose patience and sell, you are particularly likely to do so in the low end of the trading range, when stock prices have weakened and confidence in the stock has waned.
[text_ad use_category="18"]
Read More
Close
Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific advice on the fundamentals of successfully investing in the stock market. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental tip and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “It pays to stay aware of market risk, but don’t let it become an obsession.” As we saw in the past few years, stock prices do sometimes reach a market peak or “top,” then go into a deep slump that lasts a year or two, or even longer. However, some investors and advisors make a career out of analyzing past market tops and the declines that followed. These “top-stalkers” always seem to think the next such decline is just around the corner. Here are three common top-stalker categories:...
We’ve long relied on these three tips to find the best stocks to recommend in our investment services and newsletters, including our flagship advisory, The Successful Investor. We think they can help you pick winners, too. 1. Some of the best stocks have hidden assets: By hidden assets, we mean assets that are getting less investor attention than they deserve. When assets are wholly or partly hidden or ignored, a stock trades for less than it’s worth. So buyers get a bargain. These are also some of the best stocks for attracting takeover bids from corporate acquirers, who are usually looking to buy asset bargains, just like us.
Hidden assets can consist of real estate or underused brand names. For example, companies often carry their real-estate assets on the corporate books at its purchase price, even though its value has multiplied many times over the years.
Research and development spending by technology stocks is one of today’s best-hidden assets. High research and development budgets let tech stocks keep adding profitable new products to their lines and improving existing ones.
...
Hidden assets can consist of real estate or underused brand names. For example, companies often carry their real-estate assets on the corporate books at its purchase price, even though its value has multiplied many times over the years.
Research and development spending by technology stocks is one of today’s best-hidden assets. High research and development budgets let tech stocks keep adding profitable new products to their lines and improving existing ones.
...
ISHARES FTSE/XINHUA CHINA 25 INDEX FUND $40.04 (New York Exchange symbol FXI; buy or sell through brokers) is an ETF that aims to track the FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index, which is made up of the 25 largest and most liquid Chinese stocks. All of the stocks in the index trade on the Hong Kong exchange. Some also trade as American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the New York exchange. The fund’s top holdings are China Mobile, 10.3%; China Construction Bank, 9.4%; Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, 8.0%; China Life Insurance, 6.8%; CNOOC Ltd., 6.1%; China Unicom Hong Kong, 5.0%; Ping An Insurance Group, 4.4%; China Petroleum & Chemical, 4.1%; PetroChina, 4.0%; and Bank of China, 4.0%. The fund’s holdings give it the following industry breakdown: Financials, 45.6%; Telecommunications, 19.2%; Oil and Gas, 14.2%; Basic Materials, 9.4%; Industrials, 7.9%; Consumer Services, 1.8%; and Utilities, 0.8%. The ETF has an expense ratio of 0.73%. The dividend yield is 2.3%....
SPDR S&P CHINA ETF $68.56 (New York Exchange symbol GXC; buy or sell through brokers), is an exchange-traded fund that aims to track the S&P China BMI Index. This index is made up of all of the publicly traded Chinese stocks that are available to foreign investors. Right now, this ETF holds 137 stocks. The $545.7-million fund’s top holdings are: China Mobile, 8.2%; China Life Insurance, 6.2%; Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, 5.5%; China Construction Bank, 4.7%; CNOOC Ltd., 4.7%; Petro-China, 4.1%; Bank of China, 4.1%; Baidu Inc., 3.1%; China Petroleum & Chemical, 2.6%; and Tencent Holdings Ltd., 2.2%. The fund’s breakdown by industry is as follows: Financials, 31.0%; Oil and Gas, 16.1%; Telecommunication Services, 10.8%; Industrials, 10.6%; Information Technology, 10.5%; Consumer Discretionary, 6.7%; Consumer Staples, 5.5%; Basic Materials, 4.8%; and Utilities, 2.3%....
ISHARES MSCI CANADA INDEX FUND $25.44 (New York symbol EWC; buy or sell through brokers) is like a market-cap-based index fund, but its managers try to improve performance by tinkering with the index-fund formula. They do this through their proprietary Morgan Stanley Capital International Canada Index. The fund has an MER of 0.55%. The index’s top holdings are: Royal Bank, 7.1%; TD Bank, 5.6%; Suncor Energy, 4.5%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 4.4%; Barrick Gold, 3.9%; Canadian Natural Resources, 3.6%; Bank of Montreal, 3.1%; Goldcorp, 3.0%; Research in Motion, 2.9%; Potash Corp., 2.8%; Manulife, 2.8%; and CN Railway. If you want to own a Canadian index fund, you should buy the iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index Fund. You’ll pay about a third of the management fees....
POWERSHARES QQQ ETF $43.96 (Nasdaq symbol QQQQ; buy or sell through brokers), formerly called Nasdaq 100 Trust Shares, holds the stocks that represent the Nasdaq 100 Index. That index is made up of the 100 largest shares on the Nasdaq exchange based on market cap. The Nasdaq 100 Index contains firms from a number of major industries, including computer hardware and software, telecommunications, retail/wholesale trade and biotechnology. It does not contain financial companies. The fund’s expenses are about 0.20% of its assets. The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Apple, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Google, Cisco Systems, Intel, Amazon.com, Oracle Corp., Gilead Sciences and Teva Pharmaceuticals....
SPDR DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE ETF $100.29 (New York Exchange symbol DIA; buy or sell through brokers) holds the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The fund’s top holdings are IBM, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Corp., 3M, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Caterpillar Inc., United Technologies and Boeing Co. The fund’s expenses are about 0.18% of its assets. SPDR Dow Jones ETF is a buy.
SPDR S&P 500 ETF $106.11 (New York symbol SPY; buy or sell through brokers) holds the stocks in the S&P 500 Index, which consists of 500 major U.S. stocks that are chosen based on their market cap, liquidity and industry group. The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Apple, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Chevron, General Electric, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and AT&T. The fund’s expenses are just 0.10% of its assets. If you want exposure to the S&P 500 Index, SPDR S&P 500 ETF is a buy.
ISHARES DOW JONES CANADA SELECT DIVIDEND INDEX FUND $18.63 (Toronto symbol XDV; buy or sell through a broker) holds 30 of the highest-yielding Canadian stocks. Its selections are based on dividend growth, yield and payout ratio. The weight of any one stock is limited to 10% of assets. The fund’s MER is 0.50%. It yields 4.0%. The fund’s top holdings are CIBC, 7.7%; Bank of Montreal, 6.8%; TD Bank, 5.8%; National Bank, 5.3%; Telus, 5.1%; Manitoba Telecom, 4.7%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 4.6%; Royal Bank, 4.2%; IGM Financial, 4.0%; and TransCanada Corp., 3.5%. The fund holds 60.3% of its assets in financial stocks. Utilities are next, at 23.0%. The top Canadian finance stocks have sound prospects. However, if you invest in this ETF, be sure to adjust the rest of your portfolio so it won’t be overly concentrated in the financial sector....
ISHARES S&P/TSX 60 INDEX FUND $16.78 (Toronto symbol XIU; buy or sell through a broker) (units split 4-for-1 in August 2008) is a good, low-fee way to buy the top stocks and income trusts on the TSX. The units are made up of stocks that represent the S&P/TSX 60 Index, which consists of the 60 largest, most heavily traded stocks on the exchange. Expenses are just 0.17% of assets. Most of the stocks in the index are high-quality companies. However, as it must ensure that all sectors are represented, it holds a few we wouldn’t include, such as Yellow Pages Income Fund. The index’s top holdings are: Royal Bank, 7.5%; TD Bank, 6.1%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 5.2%; Suncor Energy, 5.1%; Barrick Gold, 4.8%; Canadian Natural Resources, 3.9%; Goldcorp, 3.5%; Bank of Montreal, 3.3%; CN Railway, 3.0%; Potash Corp., 2.8%; Manulife, 2.8%; CIBC, 2.7%; Research in Motion, 2.6%; and TransCanada Corp., 2.5%....