investment

Here are three rules that can help make you a successful investor. 1. Always try to apply your judgment, but don’t overrate it. If you have been successfully investing for a number of years, your judgment has value, and you should listen to it. If you spot a stock that seems to have great prospects, go ahead and buy it. Don’t wait for your broker or the cable news commentators to begin talking about it. But don’t go overboard. Something I’ve learned over the years is that no matter how sure I am that a stock is a winner, I can still be dead wrong....

MOLSON COORS CANADA INC. (Toronto symbols TPX.A and TPX.B; www.molsoncoors.com) is one of the world’s leading brewers. Its main brands include Coors Light, Molson Canadian and Carling. The company’s sales fell when it merged its U.S. brewing operations with those of rival SABMiller to form MillerCoors in 2008. Because it owns less than half of MillerCoors, accounting rules forced Molson Coors to stop including the sales from this business in its overall sales....

Members of my Inner Circle can ask me and my investment team financial questions of any kind. Aside from questions on specific investments like stocks and exchange-traded funds, members ask us many other questions about how they should be investing their money. One intriguing question came from a member who asked whether there is any advantage to investing in a prepaid funeral. I’d like to share this question, and our answer, with you....

Pat McKeough responds to many requests for specific advice on stock tips and other questions on investment and the economy from the members of his Inner Circle. 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. This week, we had a request from an Inner Circle member about Accord Financial, a stock that did well for us a couple of years ago. We recommended selling Accord and taking profits in February 2011. Pat looks at the company’s prospects today. ...

Most U.S. markets have risen lately, while Canada’s resource-heavy Toronto Stock Exchange has lagged. But as always, both remain subject to unexpected downturns. One way to profit from rising markets is to add exchange traded funds (ETFs) that track major stock indexes to your portfolio. ETFs trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. Prices are quoted in newspaper stock tables and online. You must pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell ETFs, but their low management fees still give them a cost advantage over most mutual funds....

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 investment advice, including specific stock investing tips. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investing strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away....

General Motors, $31.00, symbol GM on New York (Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $51.9 billion; www.gm.com), designs, builds and sells cars, trucks and automobile parts worldwide. It also provides automotive financing services through General Motors Financial Company. In the three months ended March 31, 2013, GM’s revenue fell 2.3%, to $36.8 billion from $37.8 billion a year ago. Revenue in North America, where the company makes 60% of its sales, rose on strong sales of pickup trucks and Cadillac-branded vehicles. Sales in China remained strong, as well, but that was not enough to offset weakness elsewhere in GM’s international operations, particularly in South America, where political unrest in Venezuela is pushing down the value of that country’s currency and the contribution of GM’s Venezuelan operations to the company’s total sales....

Slowing industrial activity in North America and China has pushed down oil demand. At the same time, rising shale oil production from North Dakota’s Bakken region has increased inventories. Both of these factors have weighed on prices. However, low prices are a mixed blessing for integrated oil companies like Suncor Energy. They earn less profit by producing crude, but their refineries also pay less for the oil they use....

More Americans own pets than ever before, and the trend looks set to keep rising. That should continue to increase the earnings of leading companies in the business. Today we examine whether PetSmart can continue the success it has enjoyed in recent years....

SYMANTEC CORP., $24.35, Nasdaq symbol SYMC, sells computer-security technology, including anti-virus and email-filtering software, to businesses and consumers. In its fiscal 2013 fourth quarter, which ended March 29, 2013, Symantec’s revenue rose 4.0%, to $1.75 billion from $1.68 billion a year earlier. That beat the consensus revenue estimate of $1.73 billion. The company is doing a good job of selling its products as ongoing subscriptions instead of one-time purchases. Subscriptions now account for 44% of Symantec’s sales to consumers and 14% of its sales to businesses. Earnings rose 11.0%, to $314 million from $283 million. Symantec spent $125 million on share repurchases in the latest quarter. Due to fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share rose 15.8%, to $0.44 from $0.38. These figures exclude costs related to the company’s plan to lay off 30% to 40% of its managers and streamline its product lines. On that basis, the latest earnings exceeded the consensus estimate of $0.38 a share. Symantec continues to spend around 15% of its revenue on research....