investment

TELUS CORP., $31.57, Toronto symbol T, is a buy.

The company is Canada’s second-largest wireless carrier with 11.42 million users, just behind BCE’s Bell Mobility (with 11.71 million users) and ahead of Rogers Communications (11.30 million users)....

The profitability of banks is determined by a variety of factors including their business mix, lending profit-margins, loan and deposit growth, bad debts, and cost management. The top-performing banks consistently find the right balance between these factors, leading to strong results and stock market performance.


Lending margins drive profits


A key driver of bank profits is their net interest margins—that’s the difference between the interest rate that a bank charges on loans it issues and the interest rate that it pays to depositors and other providers of funds to the bank.


In a rising interest rates environment, banks normally manage to increase their net interest margins—as long as the increase in the cost of funding lags the higher pricing of their loans to customers.


Banks that derive a large portion of their revenues from their lending activities benefit relatively more from improving their lending margins....

The performance of energy services companies is highly dependent on the willingness of their oil and gas production customers to spend money on exploration and new infrastructure. Note, energy producers spend more readily when they generate strong profits and cash flow.


Meantime, the higher oil and gas prices that prevailed for most of 2021 are now creating a return to pre-COVID-19 capital spending by many producers.


Energy producers are inclined to expand their operations and upgrade their facilities when they become more profitable....

This month we highlight an ETF that provides short exposure to the highly popular “disruptive growth” ARK Innovation ETF. We also look at a fund that aims to use a quantitative model to pick the top dividend-paying stocks.


TUTTLE CAPITAL SHORT INNOVATION ETF $43.66 (Nasdaq symbol SARK) provides an inverse (short) exposure to the stocks held by the popular ARK Innovation ETF (New York symbol ARKK).


This fund uses derivatives to let investors profit from a decline in the potentially overvalued and unprofitable “transformational” companies held by the ARK Innovation ETF in the electric vehicle, genomics, next-gen Internet and fintech segments.


This ETF effectively holds short positions in companies such as Tesla, Roku, Teladoc, Zoom, Coinbase and Spotify.


The fund launched on November 9, 2021; it charges a management fee of 0.75%....

A: Hamilton Enhanced Canadian Bank ETF, $28.52, symbol HCAL on Toronto, (Units outstanding: 13.5 million; Market cap: $385.0 million; www.hamiltonetfs.com), aims to track the Solactive Canadian Bank Mean Reversion Index.

This index invests in the biggest six Canadian banks—TD, Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank, CIBC, Bank of Nova Scotia and National Bank....

WAJAX CORP., $22.55, is a buy. Through their shares, investors benefit from the company’s (symbol WJX on Toronto) sales and servicing of cranes, forklifts and other heavy equipment. Wajax also provides related parts and systems such as ball bearings, hoses, diesel engines and transmissions.

The company’s customers are spread across the resources, construction, manufacturing and transportation industries.

Wajax is now buying the assets of Thunder Bay, Ontario-based Process Flow Systems Ltd....

IMPERIAL OIL LTD., $54.44, is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol IMO; Shares o/s: 695.6 million; Market cap: $38.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 2.5%; www.imperialoil.ca) is Canada’s third-largest publicly traded oil company after Canadian Natural Resources (No....

A: An American Depositary Receipt, or ADR, is a proxy for a foreign stock that trades in the U.S. and represents a specified number of shares in the foreign corporation. ADRs also qualify as ‘investment products’, like the shares of ‘split corps’ (see above).

ADRs are bought and sold on U.S....

A: M Split Corp is a split-share company that holds a substantial block of shares of Manulife Financial, a leading Canadian insurer.

Manulife is a buy recommendation of our Canadian Wealth Advisor newsletter.

“Split corps” are a type of investment product that financial institutions create to provide new investment opportunities for investors, and new revenue opportunities for themselves....

As a member of our Inner Circle, you probably know we advise investors to stick mainly with “plain vanilla” investments whenever possible. This contrasts with the advice of some brokers, who feel you are better off buying an investment product, because of some special features the product offers that are lacking in the plain-vanilla investment.

As a general rule, the majority of investment products are better deals for the financial institution than they are for the financial institution’s client—the investor....