commodity

In evaluating investments, many investors focus on what we’d call ‘investment outputs’, such as earnings, dividends, cash flow, return on equity, sales growth and so on. These are all important, of course, but you shouldn’t focus on them to the exclusion of what you might call ‘investment inputs’, such as the factors we use in assigning our Successful Investor quality ratings. Investment inputs are harder to work with than investment outputs, since it takes a judgment call to determine their risk or value. To give you a better idea of what we mean, here’s a list of a dozen investment inputs that we look at before recommending an income trust:...

Many investors assume new investments come into existence to satisfy some genuine investment need — to fill gaps in investor finances that unquestionably need filling. More often, in fact, new investments come into existence much like new hair shampoos and toothpastes. That is, marketing specialists dream up new financial products that they think they can sell. The products have to be legal and have to appeal to the investing public. But they are created and sold for the good of the sellers, not the buyers. Index-linked GICs are a perfect example. Early in this decade, when the Internet-stock collapse was still fresh in investors’ minds, these investments were an easy sell. The sales literature claimed they gave you a GIC-style guarantee of the return of your investment, plus the upside potential of equities, stock markets or commodities....

BRAZIL FUND $62 (New York symbol BZF) (CWA Rating: Aggressive) will not convert into an open-ended fund, as proposed by its managers. Shareholders rejected the plan at a special meeting. Brazil Fund now trades at a 6% discount to its net asset value. Brazil is the most populous country in South America, and it has the biggest economy. Brazil Fund is up over 24% already his year, and continues to hit record highs. It’s up 68% since March, 2005. The gains are largely on the strength of the Brazilian economy, which grew 4.9% in 2004, but slowed to 2.3% in 2005....

Our three-pronged approach to investment success is particularly well-suited to times like the present, when one particular group of investments (in this case, Resources & Commodities stocks) is making great gains and leading the market higher. Here are our three keys to successful investing: #1. Invest mainly in well-established companies....