investment

DUNDEE REIT, $34.63, symbol D.UN on Toronto, owns and manages 18.9 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space. The real estate investment trust’s occupancy rate is 95.6%. In the three months ended December 31, 2011, Dundee’s revenue jumped 73.2%, to $136.3 million from $78.7 million a year earlier. Most of the increase came from properties the trust recently purchased. The best way to assess a real estate investment trust’s operating performance is to look at its cash flow, and Dundee’s cash flow rose 62.6% in the latest quarter, to $41.0 million from $25.2 million. Cash flow per unit rose 12.7%, to $0.62 from $0.55, due to more units outstanding (the trust issued new units to pay for the acquired properties)....

ENBRIDGE INC. $39 (Toronto symbol ENB; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 779.2 million; Market cap: $30.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.6; Dividend yield: 2.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.enbridge.com) gets 85% of its revenue by operating pipelines that pump crude oil and natural gas from western Canada to eastern Canada and the U.S. The company’s pipelines handle 65% of all western Canadian crude oil exports.

The remaining 15% of revenue mainly comes from distributing natural gas to 2 million consumers in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and New York State.

Enbridge’s revenue rose 51.5%, from $10.6 billion in 2006 to $16.1 billion in 2008. Revenue fell 22.7% in 2009, to $12.5 billion, as the recession cut gas sales and prices. New pipelines pushed up revenue by 21.3%, to $15.1 billion, in 2010.

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Pat McKeough responds to many personal questions on specific stocks and other investing topics from the members of his Inner Circle. Every week, his comments and recommendations on a selection of the most intriguing questions of the past week go out to all Inner Circle members. And every Friday, we offer you one of the highlights from these Q&A sessions. This week, one Inner Circle question concerned a potentially fast-growing stock market investment, convenience store chains. Pat looks at how one U.S. chain is doing following its successful fight to resist a takeover bid from a big Canadian chain. ...

WAL-MART STORES INC. $59 (New York symbol WMT; Conservative Growth Portfolio: Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 3.4 billion; Market cap: $200.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 2.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.walmart.com) is buying 51% of Yihaodian, a Chinese company that sells groceries, clothing, consumer electronics and other goods over the Internet. Wal-Mart did not say how much it is paying for this investment, but it already owns a minority stake in Yihaodian. This familiarity cuts the risk of an unpleasant surprise. As well, Wal-Mart’s expertise will help this company expand sales and cut costs. The deal should close later this year. This is the latest in a series of acquisitions that have expanded Wal-Mart’s overseas operations. That’s helping it offset slower growth in the U.S., which accounts for 60% of its overall sales....

Investors often ask us why we don’t publish price targets for the stocks we recommend in our newsletters and investment services. After all, stock price targets commonly appear in brokerage and media reports. There are several reasons we do not follow this practice. The main one stems from a key piece of our stock trading advice: predictions are the least reliable part of the investment decision-making process....

Trading in futures is a necessity for farmers, but a risky business for most investors. Trading in futures is a long-established and perfectly

As part of our three-part Successful Investor portfolio management philosophy, we advise you to downplay or avoid stocks that are in the broker/media limelight. That’s because this limelight raises investor expectations. When limelight stocks fail to live up to these heightened expectations, and that often happens, downturns can be brutal. Similar advice applies to types of investments, such as exchange traded funds (ETFs). These investment innovations are in the broker/media limelight right now for all the usual reasons. From the media point of view, ETFs come with a good story: you can save money because they come with much lower fees than conventional mutual funds, plus there’s news to report, since new ETFs are coming out all the time....

The Galileo High Income Plus Fund is a mutual fund that mainly holds stocks (28 in all), with an emphasis on high-yielding companies. This has led the fund to invest in a lot of former oil and gas trusts that have converted to dividend paying stocks. In fact, shares of energy companies make up 53.3% of the fund’s total assets. Galileo High Income Plus Fund has an MER of 2.56%. The Galileo High Income Plus Fund’s top holdings are Badger Daylighting, Baytex Energy, Black Diamond Group, Canadian Energy Services & Technology Group, Canadian Helicopters Group, Cervus Equipment, Gibson Energy, Noranda Income Fund, Pure Energy Services and Student Transportation Inc. The fund yields about 5.8%, based on its current net asset value and its latest monthly dividend payment. That high yield has a lot of appeal for a conservative, income-seeking investor. That definition traditionally applied to investors who want income to live on. Now, more and more, it also includes conservative, risk-averse investors who interpret steady income as the mark of a secure, low-risk investment. Despite the current high yield, however, the Galileo High Income Plus Fund comes with more risk than we advise for either type of income-seeker....

As the stock market rebounded in 2009 from one of the worst crises in years, Pat McKeough was invited by Jonathan Chevreau of the Financial Post to appear on his ‘Wealthy Boomer’ telecast. In a two-part interview, Pat aired his views on a wide variety of investment subjects. Now, with the stock market coming off last autumn’s lows, we think it’s an appropriate time to replay the interview. Pat discusses not only specific solutions for volatile markets, but also how his investment advice applies in all market conditions. Here is part two of the interview, entitled “Spreading investments” on YouTube. (View part one here: Pat McKeough’s investment ideas as shown on YouTube.)...

CENOVUS ENERGY INC., $38.73, Toronto symbol CVE, spent $2.7 billion on capital upgrades in 2011. That’s up 28.7% from $2.1 billion in 2010. The company used about a third of this money to expand its 50%-owned Foster Creek and Christina Lake oil sands properties in Alberta; U.S.-based ConocoPhillips (New York symbol COP) owns the other 50%. As a result, Cenovus’s oil sands production rose 12.7% in 2011, to 66,533 barrels a day from 59,045 barrels in 2010. That helped offset a 3.5% drop in conventional oil production. Overall oil production rose 3.9%, to 134,239 barrels a day from 129,187 barrels. Natural gas production fell 11.0%, mainly because Cenovus sold some of its gas properties in 2010....