investment

Most precious metals stocks dropped when gold fell to $1,200 U.S. an ounce and silver declined to $18.50 U.S. an ounce in June 2013. Both metals have rebounded somewhat lately, with gold now at $1,371 and silver at $22.92. Here are two low-fee exchange traded funds that offer global gold and silver miners....

MAPLE LEAF FOODS INC. (Toronto symbol MFI; www.mapleleaf.ca) is Canada’s largest food processing company. It mainly sells its products, which include fresh and prepared meats and poultry, under the Maple Leaf and Schneider brands. Though 90.0%-owned Canada Bread the company also makes fresh and frozen bread, pastries and pasta....

Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific advice on specific stocks and other investments as well as questions on investment strategy and the economy. Every week, his comments and recommendations on the most intriguing questions of the past week go out to all Inner Circle members. And each week, we offer you one of the highlights from these Q&A sessions. While we reserve our buy-hold-sell advice for Inner Circle members, these excerpts provide a great deal of information and analysis on stocks we’ve covered for members of Pat’s Inner Circle....

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment-management companies. The group administers over $2 trillion U.S. in 170 mutual funds.

Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S., because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions....

PENGROWTH ENERGY CORP. (Toronto symbol PGF; www.pengrowth.com) produces oil and natural gas in Western Canada and off the Nova Scotia coast. Gas accounts for about 60% of its production; the other 40% is oil....

Last week I pointed out that learning what not to do can be the hardest and costliest part of an investor’s education. In that issue, I focused on how this applies to technical analysis—the practice of trying to base investment decisions on past trading and market history. This week I want to expand on what I said, since the idea applies to a wide range of narrow approaches to investing. To succeed as an investor, you have to take a broad view in making investment decisions. Technical analysis and other narrow views do sometimes seem to “work” for lengthy periods, of course. But they only work for a minority of the time, and they never work consistently. Instead, they run hot and cold. As with all random events, their successes occur in bunches. These bunches of successes come in random lengths, with random beginning and end points. It’s easy to see how this applies with technical analysis, which has an arcane air about it. But the same principle works for something as straightforward and commonsensical as, say, value investing....

The U.S. is the sole country worldwide that requires its citizens to file an income tax return and report any income regardless of where they live or whether they hold dual citizenship in another country. That’s unlike Canada, which mainly bases its tax system on country of residence, like most other nations. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates that five to seven million American citizens reside abroad. Of that total, about one million live in Canada. Most U.S. citizens paying income taxes in Canada pay no additional U.S. income tax. However, they still have U.S. tax filing and compliance requirements....

Surge Energy, $6.03, symbol SGY on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 121.4 million; Market cap: $722.4 million; www.surgeenergy.ca), produces oil and gas in western and eastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan. Its output is 74% oil and 26% gas. In the three months ended June 30, 2013, Surge produced 9,373 barrels of oil equivalent per day, up 1.1% from 9,275 barrels a year earlier. The rise came despite the fact that the company sold some of its less important properties, which produced 680 barrels a day, for $42.8 million U.S. on May 9, 2013. Despite the small increase in production, Surge’s cash flow per share rose 11.8% in the latest quarter, to $0.38 from $0.34 a year earlier, on higher oil and gas prices....

Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a beginning or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific investment tips and stock market advice. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investment advice, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “Dividend Reinvestment Plans have attractive features, but they shouldn’t be the sole reason you invest in a stock—or limit yourself to a portfolio of DRIPs.”...

NORDSTROM INC. (New York symbol JWN; www.nordstrom.com) mainly sells clothing, accessories and footwear. The company owns and operates 248 stores in 33 states. In the second quarter of its 2014 fiscal year, which ended August 3, 2013, Nordstrom’s sales rose 6.3%, to $3.2 billion from $3.0 billion a year earlier. Same-store sales rose 4.2% on strong demand for men’s apparel, men’s shoes and children’s clothing. Online sales jumped 37%....