investment

An investment is an asset or property acquired to generate income or gain appreciation. Appreciation is the increase in the value of an asset over time. It requires the outlay of a resource today, like time, effort, and money, for a greater payoff in the future or for generating a profit.

An investment involves using capital in the present to increase an asset’s value over time.

Investments may include bonds, stocks, real estate, or alternative investments.

Investments can be diversified to reduce risk, though this may reduce the amount of earning potential.

In business contexts, investments are financial; however, consider how some people spend time to make higher incomes in the future (i.e. invest in a college education).

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MANITOBA TELECOM SERVICES INC., $30.24, Toronto symbol MBT, has agreed to sell its Allstream division, which sells telephone, Internet and other communication services to businesses across Canada. Allstream supplies 40% of Manitoba Telecom’s revenue. The remaining 60% comes from its MTS division, which has 1.3 million telephone and wireless customers in Manitoba. The buyer is U.S.-based Zayo Group (New York symbol ZAYO), which will pay $465.0 million. Manitoba Telecom will probably use the proceeds to pay down its long-term debt of $677.1 million, which is equal to 28% of its $2.4-billion market cap (or the value of all outstanding shares)....
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Wealth Management

Securities lending by mutual funds can add to their overall returns.

Mutual funds, index funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) often engage in securities lending. That is, they lend securities to third-party borrowers, mostly hedge funds and investment firms. These borrowers then mainly use them for short selling. That is, they sell the securities with the hope of buying them back at a lower price. This is, of course, a way of speculating on a share price decline.

The lending institution or fund receives all the dividends and interest it was entitled to as an investor in the security, plus a fee for making the securities loan.

There is negligible risk of losing money on the loan, since the borrower puts up collateral of at least 102% of the borrowed securities’ value. This collateral typically consists of cash, T-bills or highly rated short-term debt instruments. The borrower is liable for any shortfall between the value of the collateral and the value of the securities. If the value of the securities rises, the borrower has to add to the collateral on a daily basis to maintain coverage at 102%.

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ISHARES CDN REIT SECTOR INDEX FUND $15.10 (Toronto symbol XRE; buy or sell through brokers; ca.ishares.com) holds the 15 Canadian real estate investment trusts in the S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index.

iShares CDN REIT’s expenses are 0.60% of its assets. The fund yields 5.5%.

The ETF’s largest holding is RioCan REIT at 20.1%, followed by H&R REIT (14.4%), Smart REIT (8.5%), Canadian Apartment Properties REIT (7.9%), Canadian REIT (7.7%), Allied Properties REIT (6.7%), Cominar REIT (6.1%), Dream Office REIT (5.6%), Boardwalk REIT (5.1%), Artis REIT (4.6%), Granite REIT (4.4%), Crombie REIT (2.5%), Dream Global REIT (2.4%), Pure Industrial REIT (2.1%) and Northern Property REIT (1.5%).

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RIOCAN REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $25.36 (Toronto symbol REI.UN; Units outstanding: 319.4 million; Market cap: $8.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 5.6%; www.riocan.com) is Canada’s largest real estate investment trust.

In the three months ended September 30, 2015, RioCan’s cash flow rose 2.3%, to $0.44 a unit from $0.43 a year earlier.

Revenue gained 4.5%, to $320.6 million from $306.9 million. The trust continues to do a good job of hanging onto tenants and renewing leases at higher rates: rents on renewals rose 8.6% in Canada and 9.8% in the U.S.

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Over the past few decades, we’ve built a list of what we call “reasons for wariness”. No single one of these factors is a sure sign of a bad investment. But we watch out for them when analyzing investments, especially where we find more than one. When we spot reasons for wariness in a business model or a growth plan, we want to be sure the company understands the risk. One prominent factor on our list is growth by acquisition. A company can speed up its growth by buying other companies, rather than building on or duplicating its existing operations. But, while acquisitions speed growth, they also accumulate risk. After all, the seller of something always knows more about it than the buyer. When a company focuses on acquisitions for corporate growth, it assumes it can out-perform the current management of what it buys. It assumes it can raise the return by a wide enough margin to increase its earnings, over and above the acquisition’s cost....
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