investment

CANADIAN TIRE CORP., $89.56, Toronto symbol CTC.A, rose 6% this week after the company reported better-than-expected earnings. In the three months ended June 29, 2013, Canadian Tire’s earnings rose 15.9%, to $154.9 million from $133.7 million a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 17.2%, to $1.91 from $1.63, on fewer shares outstanding. That easily beat the consensus estimate of $1.80 a share. Sales rose 1.0%, to $3.02 billion from $2.99 billion. Same-store sales gained 2.0% at the company’s 490 Canadian Tire stores, thanks to strong sales of automotive and kitchen goods. Higher demand for seasonal merchandise, like bicycles and patio furniture, also contributed to the higher results....

BELLATRIX EXPLORATION, $7.16, symbol BXE on Toronto, continues to enter into joint ventures to speed up the development of its Cardium shale oil deposits in west-central Alberta. Under the latest agreement, Bellatrix will sell a 50% interest in its producing wells in the Ferrier and Willesden Green area to Daewoo International Corporation and Devonian Natural Resources Private Equity Fund for $52.5 million. These wells produce 268 barrels of oil equivalent per day. To put that in context, Bellatrix’s output averaged 22,102 barrels per day in the latest quarter. Following the sale, Daewoo and Devonian will invest $100 million in a multi-year program to drill 70 new wells on the Ferrier and Willesden Green properties. Bellatrix will match that spending, and the joint-venture partners will share in any new production....

Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific advice on Canadian 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....

ISHARES CDN REIT SECTOR INDEX FUND $15.05 (Toronto symbol XRE; buy or sell through brokers; ca.ishares.com) holds the 15 Canadian real estate investment trusts (REITs) in the S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index. The weight of each REIT is limited to 25% of the ETF’s value.

iShares CDN REIT’s expenses are 0.60% of its assets....

TORSTAR $5.69 (Toronto symbol TS.B; Shares outstanding: 79.9 million; Market cap: $458.5 million; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 9.2%; www.torstar.com) reported lower-than-expected earnings in the latest quarter.

In the three months ended June 30, 2013, Torstar’s earnings fell 44.7%, to $18.0 million, or $0.23 a share, from $32.6 million, or $0.41, a year earlier....

GOOGLE INC. (Nasdaq symbol GOOG; www.google.com) is the world’s top Internet search engine, with about two-thirds of this market. It makes money by selling advertising on its websites. Google charges advertisers every time a user clicks on one of their ads. The company gets 93% of its revenue from advertising....

Our Successful Investor approach has three key rules: 1. Invest mainly in well-established stocks with a history of sales and earnings, if not dividends; 2. Spread your money out across most if not all of the five main economic sectors—Manufacturing & Industry, Resources & Commodities, Consumer, Finance and Utilities; 3. Downplay or avoid stocks in the broker/media limelight. This third rule is less familiar than the first two, but every bit as crucial. That’s because it helps to protect you from the potentially costly side effects of human nature. Many good stocks are well-known, well-managed and widely followed—“household names”, as some investors refer to them. That’s a good description of most of the stocks we analyze and recommend. However, the broker/media limelight is far more exclusive....

GuestLogix, $0.98, symbol GXI on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 74.7 million; Market cap: $73.2 million; www.guestlogix.com), provides onboard retail and payment systems to airlines, railways and passenger ferries. It sells the GuestLogix Mobile Virtual Store and the accompanying point-of-sale handheld device. The company was founded in 2002. It is based in Toronto, but it has sales offices in the U.S., U.K. and Singapore. GuestLogix estimates that its systems serve about 90% of airline passengers in North America and 40% worldwide. Its clients include American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United/Continental Airlines, US Airways, Southwest Airlines, British Airways, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Ryanair, Qantas Airways and WestJet....

Empire Company Ltd., $82.05, symbol EMP.A on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 68.0 million; Market cap: $5.6 billion; www.empireco.ca), is a diversified Canadian firm based in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. Empire sells and distributes food through national grocery retailer Sobeys. It also invests in real estate and various publicly traded companies. In June 2007, Empire paid $1.06 billion for the 29.9% of Sobeys that it did not already own. (Sobeys was a recommendation of our Successful Investor newsletter. We first recommended the stock in April 2003 at $36, so the buyout left our subscribers with a 61% gain.)...

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....