investment

The long-term outlook for oil and natural gas is positive, although in the short term, shale oil and gas discoveries continue to rapidly increase supply. That’s keeping prices low—and pushing down the shares of producers. We advise against overindulging in any one sector. However, we do think most safety-conscious investors should stick with the energy stocks we rate as buys in Canadian Wealth Advisor. Here is our latest advice on two of them....

TORSTAR CORP., $7.03, Toronto symbol TS.B, fell 11% this week after the company reported lower-than-expected earnings. In 2012, Torstar’s earnings fell 52.6%, to $103.2 million, or $1.30 a share. In 2011, it earned $217.7 million, or $2.74 a share. If you exclude writedowns and other unusual items, earnings per share would have declined 25.0%, to $1.35 from $1.80. On that basis, the latest earnings missed the consensus estimate of $1.48 a share. Overall revenue fell 4.1%, to $1.49 billion from $1.55 billion. Revenue at the newspaper division, which supplies 71% of the total, fell 2.8%. The slow economy continues to hurt advertising revenue at the company’s newspapers, particularly The Toronto Star, its flagship paper. As well, its 50%-owned Workopolis.com job-search website is facing rising competition, and employers are advertising fewer positions. As a result, Torstar has written down the value of this investment by $11.0 million....

Pat McKeough responds to many personal questions about investing in stocks and other topics 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 received a question from an Inner Circle member about Pitney Bowes. This company has been a leader in the manufacture of postage meters and mailing equipment, and Pat assesses its efforts to adapt to the growing predominance of electronic mail and Internet communications. ...

Low interest rates continue to spur demand for high-quality dividend-paying stocks, such as these four electrical utilities. We like the outlook for all of them, but only three are buys right now.

CANADIAN UTILITIES LTD. (Toronto symbols CU [class A non-voting] $79 and CU.X [class B voting] $79; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 128.6 million; Market cap: $10.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.2; Dividend yield: 2.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above A v e r a g e ; www.canadianutilities.com) distributes electricity and natural gas in Alberta....

RIOCAN REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $27 (Toronto symbol REI.UN; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Units outstanding: 300.1 million; Market cap: $8.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 4.8; Dividend yield: 5.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.riocan.com) is Canada largest real estate investment trust (REIT), with 294 retail properties, including 11 under development....

ANDREW PELLER LTD. $11 (Toronto symbol ADW.A; Income Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 14.3 million; Market cap: $157.3 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.6; Dividend yield: 3.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.andrewpeller.com) reported that its sales rose 4.2% in the three months ended December 31, 2012, to $79.8 million from $76.6 million a year earlier....

PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. (New York symbol PG; www.pg.com) is one of the world’s largest makers of household and personal-care products. Its top brands include Tide detergent, Crest toothpaste, Head & Shoulders shampoo and Pampers diapers. The company faces rising competition from generic brands. Last year, it responded with a major restructuring plan, which mainly involves cutting 5% of its workforce and closing plants....

Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific advice on a wide range of investing topics, including trading stocks online. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental tip and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Tip of the week: “Online trading seems like an easy and convenient way to invest, but that can also make it an easy way to lose money.”...

We think conservative investors could hold up to 10% of their portfolios in foreign stocks. One way to do that is to buy carefully chosen exchange traded funds (ETFs) that have an overseas focus. The best ETFs offer very low management fees and well-diversified, tax-efficient portfolios of high-quality stocks. ISHARES MSCI SOUTH KOREA INDEX FUND (New York Exchange symbol EWY; buy or sell) is an exchange traded fund that aims to track the MSCI Korea Index....

AMAZON.COM (Nasdaq symbol AMZN; www.amazon.com) is a major online retailer. It gets about 33% of its sales from books, music and videos. Other products, including electronics, computer games and toys, make up the other 67%. Amazon Marketplace lets other companies sell their products through Amazon’s websites....