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Aside from the daily updates, TSI Network offers a number of other stock market education benefits, including almost 4,000 articles on individual investments and how you can use our time-tested investing philosophy to maximize your investments.

TSI Network’s glossary section is one of our key stock market education features. It contains hundreds of definitions that you can use to build your investment knowledge. These not only include a wide range of investment terms, but also the names, stock symbols and descriptions of individual companies, some of which you may be considering buying (or selling).

A powerful stock market education tool

But that’s just the beginning. Our glossary also lets you build your stock market education by instantly cross-referencing these definitions with our latest daily updates related to the term you’ve searched.

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TFSAs let you earn investment income — including interest, dividends and capital gains — tax free. You could only invest $5,000 this year to start your TFSA. However, you gain an additional $5,000 of contribution room (indexed to inflation and rounded to the nearest $500 on a yearly basis) every year, plus you get to carry forward unused contribution room from previous years. (So in 2010 you’ll have $10,000 of contribution room, $15,000 in 2011, and so on.)

Use your tax free savings account to complement your RRSP

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Japan is heading into an election on August 30. Polls show the Democratic Party of Japan stands a good chance of defeating Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Liberal Democratic Party in the Japanese parliament’s lower house.

To spur economic activity, the Democratic Party of Japan plans to push for more aggressive stimulus spending, such as allowances for families with children, free public high-school education and cuts to the gasoline tax.

Stimulus spending drives rebound

Government stimulus spending has already played a big role in the country’s recent turnaround. In the latest quarter, ended June 30, 2009, Japan’s economy posted an annualized growth rate of 3.7%. The turnaround comes after four quarters of steep contraction, and is one reason why investors are wondering if Japan is now a good place for offshore investing.

Under Prime Minister Aso, Japan’s government is spending 25 trillion yen ($284.6 billion Canadian) to help the economy grow. As in many other developed countries, this is taking the form of infrastructure spending, direct handouts to consumers and incentives for environmentally friendly products.

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Lowering the costs of investing has an immediate, obvious benefit: it leaves you with more money. But some cost-cutting investment techniques can wind up costing you money in the long run. For instance, participating in dividend reinvestment plans, or DRIPs, is a good idea if you only use it to cut commission costs on stocks you would have bought anyway.

It pays to look beyond dividend reinvestment plans

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Aggressive investors need to be more skeptical and discriminating than conservative investors, because they take on great risk. Conservative investors mainly buy well-established companies with a history of earnings and possibly dividends, and a secure hold on a growing, or at least stable, clientele. When an investment like that runs into problems, its stock price can fall — sometimes drastically. But it will usually survive. It can then go on to prosper all over again when good times return. When something goes wrong with an aggressive investing stock pick, there is far greater risk of serious, if not total, loss....

When you join my Inner Circle service, you get to ask me your own personal investment questions, plus you get to see what other Inner Circle members have asked. So you can see how the service works, and get a sense of how it might help you make good investments, I’d like to share just a couple of recent member questions with you. I hope you enjoy and profit from them. Q: A friend of mine recently purchased a “Trading Robot” to help him make good investments. He is ecstatic because the robot can trade 24 hours a day with inputted instructions respecting trading. He is required to place his investment funds with a brokerage in Dubai, although he says he will set up a segregated account in the U.K. What is your opinion/experience with “Trading Robots”? Many thanks. A: Foreign exchange (“forex”) trading robots automatically place trades on your behalf using a complex formula....

An investor recently asked us a question that touches on several stock market investing concepts that we cover in our Canadian Wealth Advisor newsletter. He said, “Due to a corporate reorganization, I now have the option of cashing in $279,000 from insurance-company mutual funds, then transferring the money into my brokerage RRSP account. I prefer to invest the money directly in stocks you recommend, rather than hold mutual funds from my insurance company. However, the insurance company tells me that I have to cash in the funds first, then wait at least six weeks for the money to turn up in my brokerage RRSP account. I’m concerned that the market will turn up while the money is in transit and I’ll wind up missing out. What should I do?”...

Perhaps the most fundamental piece of investment advice you will ever receive is to make sure you carefully read a contract and get clarification of anything you don’t understand before you sign. Most investors are familiar with this investment advice, of course, but it’s important to keep in mind, especially when doing things like opening an investment account, or transferring investments from one brokerage to another. It’s something we take very seriously when we manage the portfolios of clients of our Successful Investor Wealth Management service. When we fill out account transfer forms, we make sure that each form is checked and double-checked by two different people in our office, to avoid costly mistakes....

We recently read the Yahoo news story of Ddalgi (Korean for “Strawberry”), a five-year-old parrot from Papua, New Guinea, who competed with 10 human investors in a stock-picking contest in South Korea. Strawberry’s stock market picks reportedly posted a 13.7% return. While not good enough for first, the result put her in a respectable third place. Her human competitors, on the other hand, posted an average loss of 4.6%. (The story reminded me of a Globe and Mail stock-picking contest in which I was pitted against eight other human competitors and a plastic Santa. More on that in a moment...) Stories like these are not uncommon, and are not limited to stock-picking contests. You may have heard of Maggie the Monkey, who makes yearly hockey playoff picks that routinely beat those of human analysts....

It pays to be skeptical of growth stocks that rely too heavily on acquisitions. That’s because the buyer of something rarely knows as much about it as the seller. So it follows that if a company makes enough acquisitions, it might eventually buy something that has hidden problems. At some point, those problems will come out into the open and hurt the buyer’s earnings.

Big acquisitions can mean big debts for growth stocks

Acquisitions, particularly big ones, can also push up debt, which leaves the buyer vulnerable to failure if it can’t meet the payments. They can also load the buyer’s balance sheet with goodwill, an intangible asset whose value can drop overnight if it turns out that the company made a bad acquisition. In that case the company has to write off all or part of the acquisition’s cost against current earnings. This can wipe out a year’s earnings for the growth stock and devastate its share price.

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Opening a brokerage account is often one of the first steps beginning investors take when they start investing in the stock market. You’ll first have to choose whether a full-service or discount broker is right for you. (This is one of the questions we help you answer in our new special report, “Canadian Stock Market Basics: How to Trade Stocks and Make Good Investments in Canada.”) If you choose to use a full-service broker for investing in the stock market, you’ll have to fill out an application form to set up your account. When you do, we think you should pay special attention to two sections: “risk level” and “investment objectives.” (You don’t need to fill these out with a discount broker, but the answers are well worth thinking about nonetheless.)...

ATCO LTD. (Toronto symbols ACO.X (class I non-voting) $38 and ACO.Y (class II voting) $39; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 57.9 million; Market cap: $2.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.7; SI Rating: Above Average) is a Calgary-based holding company. ATCO’s main subsidiary is 52.3%-owned Canadian Utilities Ltd.. This business distributes natural gas and electricity in Alberta. It also operates power plants in Canada, the U.K. and Australia. ATCO’s other businesses involve selling specialized services to other companies. These include building temporary structures, airfields and communication systems for resource and construction firms. It also offers billing and payment processing, natural-gas storage and travel services. The company’s revenue fell from $3.3 billion in 2004 to $2.9 billion in 2005, after Canadian Utilities sold its non-regulated retail operations, which supplied households with natural gas and electricity. But revenue rose steadily, returning to $3.3 billion in 2008. Earnings more than doubled, from $130.9 million, or $2.28 a share, in 2004 to $265.6 million, or $4.60 a share, in 2008....

DUNDEE CORP. $9.40 (Toronto symbol DC.A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 74.3 million; Market cap: $698.4 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.9; SI Rating: Average) is a holding company with subsidiaries in three main areas: wealth management, real estate and resources. The company’s main asset is its 49% stake (62% voting interest) in DundeeWealth Inc. (Toronto symbol DW), which provides investment-management, securities-brokerage, financial-planning and investment-advisory services. It also owns the Dynamic family of mutual funds. In the three months ended June 30, 2009, Dundee earned $29.9 million, or $0.39 a share. That’s a big improvement over the $6.6 million, or $0.08 a share, that it earned in the year-earlier quarter. The gain was largely driven by new floating-rate notes that Dundee received last January in exchange for illiquid asset-backed commercial paper. Based on improving conditions in the credit markets, Dundee recognized a $45.6-million, non-cash accounting gain on these notes in the latest quarter. Revenue fell 13.5%, to $245.6 million from $284 million, as lower stock-market values hurt Dundee-Wealth’s management fees and mutual-fund sales. As of June 30, 2009, DundeeWealth’s assets under management stood at $29.8 billion. That’s a 5.2% drop from $31.5 billion a year earlier....

GREAT-WEST LIFECO INC. $25 (Toronto symbol GWO; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 944.3 million; Market cap: $23.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.0; SI Rating: Above Average) is Canada’s largest insurance company, with $441.9 billion of assets under administration. Great-West also provides retirement-planning and wealth-management services. It gets about 60% of its earnings from Canada, followed by Europe (25%) and the United States (15%). Power Financial Corp. (Toronto symbol PWF) owns 68.7% of Great-West’s shares. In August 2007, Great-West bought Putnam Investments Trust, a leading U.S. mutual-fund company. Great-West paid just $4.2 billion, even though Putnam had $182 billion U.S. in assets under administration. That’s because Putnam was coming off a mutual-fund trading scandal that spurred a wave of investor redemptions. Putnam’s assets have since dropped to $108 billion U.S., largely because of falling stock prices. Still, the purchase gave Great-West access to Putnam’s large client base. In the three months ended June 30, 2009, Great-West’s earnings fell 26.8%, to $413 million from $564 million a year earlier. In response to last year’s financial-market turmoil, the company sold $1 billion worth of common shares to shore up its already strong balance sheet. As a result, earnings per share in the latest quarter fell 30.2%, to $0.44 from $0.63....

IGM FINANCIAL INC. $43 (Toronto symbol IGM; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 264.1 million; Market cap: $11.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 4.7; SI Rating: Above Average) is Canada’s largest independent mutual-fund company, with $112.3 billion in assets under management. Power Financial owns 56.4% of IGM. IGM operates through two main divisions. Investors Group sells funds through its own network of 4,500 advisors. Mackenzie Financial sells its funds through independent brokers. In June, IGM purchased the 27.6% of Investment Planning Counsel (IPC) that it did not already own. IPC’s 700 advisors provide wealth-management services. IGM paid a total of $42.4 million, which consisted of $1.7 million in cash and $40.7 million in common shares. IGM will keep operating IPC separately, and will not merge it with Investors Group or Mackenzie....

HOME CAPITAL GROUP INC. $37 (Toronto symbol HCG; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 34.4 million; Market cap: $1.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.5; SI Rating: Average) is the parent of Home Trust Company, a federally regulated trust company that specializes in issuing residential first mortgages and credit cards to borrowers who don’t meet the higher standards of larger, traditional lenders. Home Capital issued $1.3 billion worth of new residential mortgages in the three months ended June 30, 2009. That’s up 82.2% from the prior quarter. The gain is mainly because low interest rates helped improve housing markets in Ontario and Quebec. However, the company issued just $23.3 million of new non-residential mortgages, a 34.5% drop from the prior quarter. Because of the higher volumes, Home Capital’s revenue rose 7.8%, to $121.8 million from $113 million a year earlier. Earnings jumped 29.4%, to $34.4 million, or $0.99 a share, from $26.6 million, or $0.76 a share....

EMERA INC. $21 (Toronto symbol EMA; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 112.4 million; Market cap: $2.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.7; SI Rating: Average) has expanded beyond Nova Scotia in the past few years. The company supplies 95% of that province’s electrical power. For example, Emera will pay $27.6 million for 9.9% of Algonquin Power Income Fund (Toronto symbol APF.UN). Algonquin owns or has interests in 41 hydroelectric facilities in Canada and the U.S. Separately, Emera and Algonquin have formed a 50/50 joint venture that will pay $116 million U.S. for a power generation and distribution business in Lake Tahoe, California. After these transactions close in 2010, they should add $6 million to $7 million to Emera’s annual earnings. Meanwhile, Emera earned $38.1 million, or $0.33 a share, in the second quarter of 2009. That’s down 11.2% from $42.9 million, or $0.37 a share, a year earlier. Under a new arrangement with Nova Scotia power regulators, Emera incurred an extra $16.3 million of fuel expenses in the quarter. However, the deal also let it increase power rates, which will help it recover most of these extra costs. Revenue by 5.2%, to $334.2 million from $317.6 million....

FORTIS INC. $25 (Toronto symbol FTS; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 170.3 million; Market cap: $4.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; SI Rating: Above Average) gets just 15% of its revenue from Newfoundland Power, its original business. In the past few years, the company has bought electrical utilities in four other Canadian provinces, as well as the U.S. and Caribbean. However, about half of its revenue now comes from Terasen Inc., which distributes natural gas in British Columbia. The company paid $3.7 billion for Terasen in May 2007. In the three months ended June 30, 2009, Fortis’s earnings jumped 82.8%, to $53 million, or $0.31 a share, from $29 million, or $0.18 a share, a year earlier. If you exclude one-time charges in the year-earlier quarter, earnings would have risen 20.5%. Terasen contributed $14 million to the latest earnings. Revenue fell 11.1%, to $754 million from $848 million. The drop was largely because of warmer-than-usual spring weather, which hurt natural-gas demand at Terasen. The stock trades at 16.7 times Fortis’s projected 2009 earnings of $1.50 a share. That’s a higher p/e ratio than other utilities, but still reasonable in light of Fortis’s high-quality operations and geographic diversity. The $1.04 dividend yields 4.2%....

Investing is different from many other pursuits in one crucial way: doing the wrong thing as an investor can actually make money for you, but only temporarily. Buying low-quality stocks is a mistake that many investors make. Some get hooked on it, since low-quality stocks can be highly profitable over short periods. That’s because they are generally more volatile than the high-quality stocks (the kind that have a history of earnings, if not dividends) that we recommend in our Successful Investor newsletter.

Low-quality penny stocks are quick to fall when a bubble bursts

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Many companies have cut their spending on information technology while they wait for the economy to start growing again. At the same time, consumers are buying less computer equipment as job losses push up the unemployment rate and erode confidence. Still, we feel that high-quality junior tech stocks have a bright long-term outlook. Despite the recession, the best of them remain profitable, and they’ll benefit further from pent-up demand as the economy recovers.

Cyberplex: An “Internet survivor”

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There’s no doubt that p/e (price-to-earnings) ratios are a major part of many investors’ stock research. They are published regularly on the Internet and in newspapers, and are widely followed. The p/e is the ratio of a stock’s market price to its per-share earnings. Generally, the rule is that the lower the p/e, the better, and a p/e of less than, say 10, represents excellent value. A low p/e implies more profit for every dollar you invest. Typically, when you do stock research, you calculate p/e’s using a stock’s current price and its earnings for the previous 12 months.

P/e ratios are just one measure of value

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In 2011, the Canadian government will begin taxing income trusts (with the exception of real estate investment trusts, or REITs). The effect the tax change will have on Canadian investors’ portfolios is something we’ve often discussed in our Canadian Wealth Advisor newsletter. When the income-tax benefits of Canadian income trusts are eliminated, some may convert to conventional corporations — the same structure as most common stocks. Others may choose to remain as trusts. Either way, some Canadian income trusts will cut their distributions. That’s because their cash available for distribution to unitholders will fall after they begin to pay corporate taxes and can’t pass it all on tax-free....

BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA $47.64 (Toronto symbol BNS: Shares outstanding: 992 million; Market cap: $47.3 billion; SI Rating: Above Average) is the third-largest of Canada’s five big banks, with assets of $513.6 billion. In the three months ended April 30, 2009, Bank of Nova Scotia’s revenue rose 13.4%, to $3.6 billion from $3.2 billion. However, earnings per share fell 16.5%, to $0.81 from $0.97. That’s because the bank raised its loan-loss provisions by 219.6%. Bank of Nova Scotia has the largest international operations of the big-five banks, with a third of its earnings coming from overseas. It prefers to focus on developing countries in Latin America and Asia, where it can quickly increase its earnings and market share....

TEMPLETON EMERGING MARKETS FUND $17.44 (New York symbol EMF; CWA Fund Rating: Speculative) is a closed-end fund that invests in equities from emerging economies. Franklin Templeton manages the fund. Templeton Emerging Market Fund’s holdings are spread around the world. Despite its volatility, the fund gives investors access to countries like Brazil, China, India and others that still have strong growth prospects. The $254.2-million fund’s largest holdings by country are: Brazil (16.6%), China (15.4%), Russia, (14%), Mexico (8.3%), South Africa (8.1%), India (7.3%) and South Korea (7.1%)....

NEW GERMANY FUND $9.91 (New York symbol GF; CWA Fund Rating: Speculative) is a closed-end fund that mostly invests in small- and mid-cap German equities. The fund’s manager is Deutsche Asset Management. The $210-million fund’s holdings operate in Germany (91%) and the Netherlands (9%). The New Germany Fund’s top holdings are European Aeronautical Defense (Netherlands: aerospace and defense), 5.9%; Bilfinger Berger (construction and engineering), 4.6%; United Internet (Internet service provider), 4.4%; Rheinmetall AG (an industrial conglomerate), 4.4%; GEA Group (chemicals), 4.3%; Software AG, 4.2%; Wacker Chemicals, 4.0%; MTU Aero Engines, 3.6%; Lanxess (specialty chemicals), 3.4%; and Hochtief AG (construction), 3.3%....