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Here’s a special report from our research team on the October 21, 2019, Canadian Federal election. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals lost their majority but held on to a minority government with 157 seats (170 are needed for a majority). The Liberals failed to win any seats in Alberta or Saskatchewan.

The Conservatives won a total of 121 seats and the NDP, 24....

Test your knowledge with our QUIZ on how to invest in blue chip companies for superior portfolio returns

You can count on your favourite Canadian newspapers to do a great job of reporting the results of yesterday’s Canadian federal election. However, it will take a little longer to figure out how the new minority Canadian government will hurt or help your investments....

Here’s the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in August.

“In recent years, I’ve mentioned that the world is going through a gigantic monetary experiment. At first, I was referring to the “quantitative easing” that the U.S....

The ETF, or exchange traded fund, is the biggest advance for individual investors since the introduction of discount brokers. Both help you cut costs. But both these developments expose you to risk as well.

When you deal with a discount broker, you pay a lot less to act on your investment transactions than you would when dealing with a standard broker....

“A rising market climbs a wall of worry.”

—origin unknown, in use with numerous variations, since at least the 1970s

I’ve mentioned many times over the years that the quote above is one of the wisest investment one-liners I’ve come across. However, it can be useful or misleading, depending on how you interpret it.

The best use is to take it as a reminder that in a healthy, rising market that has additional gains ahead, you never run out of things to worry about....

Funds invested in venture capital in the U.S. amounted to $4 billion in 1994; the 2018 figure was a record $100 billion. Note that this is not the total value of U.S. venture capital holdings. These are the amounts of new investment in the field in these two years, respectively.

Back when this burst of growth was just getting started, most venture-capital investment managers acknowledged that perhaps only one in 10 of the deals they financed wound up making any money for investors....

One key part of our Successful Investor approach is our “Limelight Rule”: Downplay or avoid stocks in the broker-media limelight.

This is a basic portfolio-construction principle. Heightened attention from brokers and the media is a poor guide to investment profits....

“…we suspect that few of today’s cannabis stocks will turn into profitable companies, and many will wind up worthless. We now look at cannabis stocks almost every week. We have yet to find any cannabis stock speculations we can recommend.”

—from the Inner Circle Q&A June 12, 2018

We launched our Pat McKeough’s Inner Circle service 17 years ago....

I’ve often written that conflicts of interest are the greatest risk you face as an investor. This idea seems to make sense to most Inner Circle members, even if they never thought of it that way before. But when I mention it to experienced investment professionals, most react in one of three ways:

1. A blank look, as if I’ve referred to something that they know nothing about, or a sensitive issue they don’t want to talk about;
2. An aggrieved or defensive look, as if I’ve raised a sensitive issue and they expect me to follow up with criticism of something they’ve done;
3. A big smile, as if they know of an outrageous conflict of interest and are eager to share.

Recently I got response #3—a big smile—from a fellow portfolio manager....