stock prices

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $61(Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $85.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.4; Dividend yield: 4.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rbc.com) is part of a consortium that plans to set up a new Canadian stock exchange....

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 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. Today’s tip: “The best way to outperform the market is to invest consistently—and to avoid going in and out of the market erratically trying to buy low and sell high.”...

When I look at all the relevant information, I’m reasonably confident that we have set off on a secular bull market. That’s a situation like we had from the early 1980s through the year 2000, or the late 1940s through to the early 1970s. A secular bull market is a period of rising stock prices, lasting anywhere from one to several decades. During a secular bull market, stock prices still go through bear markets (downturns of 20% or more, say). The difference with a secular bull market is that the rising phases within it generally last longer and go higher than people expect. Also, the falling phases or bear markets take a smaller toll off of stock prices, and/or end sooner than people generally expect. Secular bull markets generally begin toward the end of a period of low investor expectations and weak investor returns. The time between 2000 and 2012 was one of those periods. It gave investors lots of things to worry about—the U.S. real estate collapse, high debt and economic weakness in the eurozone, rising nuclear threats from North Korea and possibly Iran, soaring national debt, and stubbornly high unemployment. As a result, we had weak investor returns in those dozen years, overall....

The beginning of the summer holiday is a good time to defuse one of the predominant fears of stock market investing, market risk. While it pays to stay aware of market risk, you should never let it become an obsession. All investors need to recognize that stock prices do sometimes reach a market peak or ‘top’, then go into a slump. However, some investors and advisors make a career out of analyzing past market tops, especially those that were followed by deep declines....

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $59 (Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $82.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.3; Dividend yield: 4.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rbc.com) is Canada’s largest bank, with $867.5 billion of assets.

Royal recently paid $3.7 billion for Ally Financial’s Canadian operations. This business mainly provides car loans through over 1,600 dealerships across the country. It also offers no-fee savings accounts and consumer and business loans.

If you exclude unusual items, such as the cost of integrating this business, Royal earned $2.0 billion in the quarter ended April 30, 2013. That’s up 13.4% from $1.7 billion a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 14.2%, to $1.29 from $1.13, on fewer shares outstanding. The Ally business contributed $12 million to Royal’s latest earnings. As well, more of Royal’s borrowers are repaying their loans on time. The bank set aside $288 million for potential bad loans, down 17.2% from $348 million a year earlier.

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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 advice. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of stock market advice, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “Base your investment decisions of the value and quality of the stocks you’re considering, not stock price flip-flops.”...

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA (Toronto symbol RY; www.rbc.com) is Canada’s largest bank, with $867.5 billion of assets. Royal recently paid $3.7 billion for Ally Financial’s Canadian operations. This business mainly provides car loans through over 1,600 dealerships across the country. It also offers no-fee savings accounts and consumer and business loans....

Bank of Nova Scotia (see page 61) is our favourite bank, but we still like the outlook for Canada’s other top banks. All four are using their strong balance sheets to buy up assets that diversify their businesses, often at bargain prices.

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $59 (Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $82.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.3; Dividend yield: 4.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rbc.com) is Canada’s largest bank, with $867.5 billion of assets.

Royal recently paid $3.7 billion for Ally Financial’s Canadian operations....

CANADIAN IMPERIAL BANK OF COMMERCE, $78.35, Toronto symbol CM, reported better-than-expected earnings this week. It also raised its dividend. In its fiscal 2013 second quarter, which ended April 30, 2013, CIBC earned $876 million, up 4.3% from $840 million a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 6.0%, to $2.12 from $2.00, on fewer shares outstanding. These figures exclude several unusual items, mainly losses on securities the bank holds. On that basis, the latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $2.08 a share. Revenue rose 1.8%, to $3.14 billion from $3.08 billion. Stronger earnings from CIBC’s retail banking and wealth management divisions offset lower results from its securities-trading business. As well, more of the bank’s credit card customers are paying their accounts on time, so it cut its loan-loss provisions by 14.0%, to $265 million from $308 million a year earlier. CIBC also lowered its provisions due to fewer loan losses at its Caribbean banking and U.S. real estate lending operations....

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....