acquisition

IMPERIAL OIL LTD., $78.50, Toronto symbol IMO, is a buy.

The company gets over 90% of its production from oil sands operations in Alberta. Imperial also has conventional oil and natural gas operations in the West and holds stakes in offshore projects in Atlantic Canada.

Its other operations include three refineries (one in Alberta, two in Ontario) and a petrochemical plant in Sarnia, Ontario.

Imperial is now raising your quarterly dividend by 20.0% with the April 2024 payment, to $0.60 a share from $0.50....

Canadian Apartment Properties REIT offers a compelling yield but its venture into the European market could offer risks.

Often-overlooked Trisura Group is up a whopping 597% since its spinoff from Brookfield and its earnings just shot up a whopping 50.2% in the most-recent quarter. It’s a top pick.

BANK OF MONTREAL $124 is a buy. The bank (Toronto symbol BMO; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 713.0 million; Market cap: $88.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.7; Dividend yield: 4.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.bmo.com) completed its $13.8 billion U.S....

We continue to believe there’s room for most investors to hold aggressive stocks, which typically are more leveraged (with more debt) and volatile than conservative stocks.


Still, to cut your risk, you should limit aggressive stocks to no more than 20% of your total portfolio....

Royal Bank now plans to complete its acquisition of HSBC’s Canadian operations in March 2024. That $13.5-billion purchase enhances Royal’s domestic operations. Moreover, costs savings from the elimination of overlapping operations should also spur earnings.


Banking regulators have toughened lending standards and mortgage stress-test levels in the past few years, and that has helped keep Royal’s loan writeoffs low....

Smaller companies can generate higher returns than their larger counterparts, but their shares are often riskier and less liquid, and may underperform for long periods.


Small cap stocks are also more volatile in times of unsettled or falling markets.


Still, if you focus on the best-quality small companies—or ETFs that hold those stocks—they can be a worthwhile addition to a well-balanced portfolio


Do small companies have an edge?


Small companies trading on U.S....

We first recommended Canadian Pacific Railway (now called Canadian Pacific Kansas City) in the first issue of The Successful Investor in January 1995.

The stock moved up for our subscribers in the late 1990s, though much more slowly than Internet and technology stocks....

WOLVERINE WORLDWIDE INC., $8.57, symbol WWW on New York, is a Michigan-based footwear manufacturer. Its brands include Wolverine Boots and Shoes, Merrell, Sweaty Betty, Hush Puppies, Saucony and Stride Rite.

On January 11, 2024, the company announced that it had sold its Sperry brand (best known for boat shoes and loafers) to Authentic Brands Group Inc....

FAIR ISAAC CORP., $1,255.30, is a buy for our subscribers. Investors in this stock draw gains from a company (symbol FICO on New York) best known for its FICO Scores software. It lets lenders make better decisions about customer creditworthiness. Fair Isaac also makes programs that help credit-card issuers reduce fraud and analyze the spending patterns of cardholders.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2023, revenue rose 10.8%, to $382.1 million from $344.9 million a year earlier....