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"]
Enerplus’s production rose 2.1% in the quarter ended March 31, 2015, but that wasn’t enough to offset sharply lower oil and gas prices; cash flow per share fell 51.4%, to $0.53 from $1.09.
Like ARC, Enerplus will cut spending this year. Its outlays will now total $480 million, down 40.8% from $811.0 million in 2014.
...
BCE aims to increase Fibe speeds in Toronto to 1,000 megabits a second, or 5.7 times faster than its current top speed of 175 megabits. Faster networks will help BCE hang on to its current customers and compete with cable companies.
The company will spend $1.14 billion on these improvements, which will eventually reach 1.1 million Toronto homes and businesses. It will also speed up its Fibe networks in other cities in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
...
ALLIED PROPERTIES REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $36.94 (Toronto symbol AP.UN; Units outstanding: 77.6 million; Market cap: $2.9 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 4.0%; www.alliedreit.com) owns 142 office buildings, mostly in major Canadian cities. These mainly Class I properties contain over 9.5 million square feet of leasable area. Class I refers to 19th- and early-20th-century light industrial buildings that have been converted to retail space. They usually feature exposed beams, interior brick and hardwood floors.
Allied spent $400 million on properties in 2012, $182.4 million in 2013 and $234.9 million in 2014. In the first quarter of 2015, it added two more for $31.8 million.
...
Refining supplies the remaining 65% of Cenovus’s revenue. The company ships oil to its 50%-owned refineries in Illinois and Texas. Phillips 66 (New York symbol PSX) owns the other 50% of these operations.
Cenovus has now agreed to sell its royalty lands to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan for $3.3 billion. The company collects royalties from firms that drill for oil and gas on these properties, which total 4.8 million acres in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
...
In the three months ended March 31, 2015, Great-West’s earnings per share rose 18.6%, to $0.70 from $0.59 a year earlier.
The company’s expansion in the U.S. and Ireland continues, helping it end the latest quarter with $1.2 trillion of assets under administration. That’s up 46.0% from $805.9 billion a year earlier and 102.6% from $581.9 million on March 31, 2013.
...
