stock prices

Share prices for most utilities have dropped lately. That’s due in part to market weakness. But, it’s also due to investor worries about rising interest rates.

Traditionally, the Utilities sector suffers when interest rates rise—or if the market is worried about a rise.

Utilities have a lot of debt, and higher rates make it more expensive to raise money and refinance existing debt....

The yield of a stock is the percentage you get when you divide the current yearly dividend payment by the share price of the stock.


The yield of an ETF is the dividend per ETF unit, which is based on the dividends paid by each of the companies it holds.


Yield is an indicator we pay especially close attention to when we select stocks to recommend in our investment newsletters....

We continue to recommend that all investors own two to three of Canada’s big five banks, including Bank of Montreal (see page 41). Despite the recent market swings, they should continue to profit from their recent acquisitions and their shift to low-cost online transactions.


ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $97 (Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $135.8 billion; Price-to-sales: 3.5; Dividend yield: 3.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rbc.com) is Canada’s largest bank with assets of $1.27 trillion.


Royal continues to profit from its November 2015 purchase of Los Angeles-based City National Bank....

Stock market info, such as low market performance expectations and hidden value, can point to buying opportunities. However, there’s a lot more to it—and here are some additional tips.

No one can predict the future, in the stock market or anywhere else. But with the help of the right mindset, you can develop a sense of things that a successful investor should pay attention to, or can safely disregard.

Here’s one of the most valuable mindsets you can adopt as an investor: “A rising market climbs a wall of worry.” In other words, you need to recognize that rising stock prices automatically generate negative comment....

A secular bull market rises more than other bull markets, but both are similar. Recognizing the characteristics of secular bull markets, and using a conservative approach to building your diversified portfolio, will help you invest with confidence

These four manufacturers operate in cyclical industries. That means their profits, and stock prices, tend to move up and down with the overall economy.

They also face other challenges. Those include uncertainty over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trump administration’s plan to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

However, each of the four companies is a well-established market leader, which helps cut its risks....

Donald Trump did what we expected this past week, but added some ingenious twists.

Last week we said, “the world-wide tariffs that Trump says he has in mind [25% on steel and 10% on aluminum] may simply be opening bids that aim at getting better terms out of Canada and Mexico in NAFTA talks.” He did as we expected, but went one better: he exempted Canada and Mexico from the new tariffs, at least while NAFTA talks are underway.

To stay exempt, Canada and Mexico have to give in on some NAFTA changes that they have so far resisted....

Penny stocks are rarely the high-yield investments that some aggressive investors think they can be. Instead of putting too much money into penny stocks, investors will benefit the most by seeking shares of high-quality companies with a history of paying a consistent dividend

There are seven main reasons for the volatility of natural gas stocks. However, even with this volatility, there are some ways that investing in natural gas can lead you to long-term gains from a sector that is often considered a hedge against inflation ----------------------- Successful energy stocks pioneer technological advances. For instance, advances in gas drilling technology have helped bring huge new supplies of natural gas to the market. The new technologies made it possible to vastly increase oil and gas production, even from deposits that were once considered worthless. Even so, the price of natural gas stocks is highly volatile, and influenced both up and down by a wide range of factors. So it’s a bad idea to base investment decisions on predictions of future natural gas prices, and their effects on natural gas stock prices, because these predictions are simply not reliable.