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.

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POWER CORP. $31.00 (Toronto symbol POW; Shares outstanding: 414.0 million; Market cap: $14.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.0%; www.powercorporation.com) is a diversified holding company. It holds its financial assets through 65.7%-owned Power Financial.

These financial assets include 69.5% of Great-West Lifeco, one of Canada’s largest life insurers, and 58.7% of IGM Financial, a leading Canadian mutual fund provider.

As well, Power Financial owns 50% of holding company Parjointco, which holds a 55.5% stake in Switzerland-listed Pargesa Holdings SA. Pargesa has 95% of its assets in five large European firms. Power Corp. also has interests in Asia.

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PEYTO EXPLORATION & DEVELOPMENT CORP. $27.59 (Toronto symbol PEY; Shares outstanding: 159.0 million; Market cap: $4.5 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 4.8%; www.peyto.com) produces and explores for oil and natural gas in Alberta. Its average daily production of 81,588 barrels of oil equivalent is 91% gas and 9% oil.

In the three months ended March 31, 2015, Peyto’s cash flow fell 10.5%, to $0.94 a share from $1.05 a year ago. It raised its production by 13.0%, but that was offset by lower gas prices.

Like Bonavista, Peyto is cutting its spending this year. Its outlays will now total $560 million to $600 million, down from $690 million in 2014.

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BONAVISTA ENERGY $4.63 (Toronto symbol BNP; Shares outstanding: 206.6 million; Market cap: $1.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 9.1%; www.bonavistaenergy.com) explores for oil and natural gas in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. Its output is 75% gas and 25% oil.

In the three months ended June 30, 2015, Bonavista’s cash flow per share fell 34.3%, to $0.44 from $0.67 a year earlier.

Most of that drop came from lower oil and natural gas prices; the company’s output fell only slightly, to 73,736 barrels of oil equivalent a day from 74,273 barrels.

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ISHARES CDN REIT SECTOR INDEX FUND $15.79 (Toronto symbol XRE; buy or sell through brokers; ca.ishares.com) holds the 15 Canadian real estate investment trusts in the S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index.

iShares CDN REIT’s expenses are 0.60% of its assets. The fund yields 5.1%.

The ETF’s largest holding is RioCan REIT at 20.1%, followed by H&R REIT (14.6%), Smart REIT (7.9%), Canadian Apartment Properties REIT (7.9%), Canadian REIT (7.3%), Allied Properties REIT (6.7%), Cominar REIT (6.5%), Dream Office REIT (6.1%), Boardwalk REIT (5.3%), Granite REIT (4.5%), Artis REIT (4.3%), Dream Global REIT (2.5%), Crombie REIT (2.3%), Pure Industrial REIT (2.1%) and Northern Property REIT (1.6%).

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