stock prices

Pat McKeough responds to many personal questions on specific stocks and other investment topics 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 the Inner Circle. This past week, an Inner Circle asked us about one of the handful of companies (outside of REITs) that has remained an income trust. This auto repair firm has undertaken a program of rapid growth that involves buying up smaller shops and chains. Pat assesses the pros and cons of this aggressive strategy. Q: Dear Pat: What do you think about Boyd Group Income Fund? Could you please give me your insight and recommendation? Thank you....

Boyd Group Income Fund, $14.59, symbol BYD.UN on Toronto (Units outstanding: 12.5 million; Market cap: $182.4 million; www.boydgroup.com), operates 186 auto-body repair centres in western Canada and 14 U.S. states. These shops operate under a number of banners, including Boyd Autobody & Glass, Gerber Collision & Glass, True2Form and Cars Collision Center. Boyd is growing rapidly by acquiring independent shops and small chains. For example, in July 2012 it paid $4.4 million U.S. for Pearl Auto Body, which operates six repair shops in Colorado. Thanks to purchases like this, Boyd is now the largest collision-repair shop operator in North America by number of locations and annual sales. The U.S. accounts for 82% of its revenue....

If you’re always looking for the next market decline, you’re bound to miss out on many good investment opportunities. Specific advice on helping you develop a successful approach to investing in the stock market.

BMTC GROUP $16.90 (Toronto symbol GBT.A; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (514-648-5757; No website; Shares outstanding: 47.5 million; Market cap: $802.8 million; Dividend yield: 1.4%) is one of Quebec’s largest retailers of furniture, electronics and household appliances. It sells these products through its two affiliates: Brault & Martineau Inc. and Ameublements Tanguay.

The company has 20 large stores in the Montreal, Quebec City, Repentigny, Laval, Saint-Georges, Chicoutimi, Sainte-Therese, Trois-Rivieres, Sherbrooke, Rimouski, Riviere-du-Loup and Gatineau areas. It also has six liquidation centres and six Sleep Gallery stores.

In July 2012, BMTC opened a new store in Levis to replace the old one. The company is also building a warehouse-style outlet in St-Hubert that will offer lower-priced products and operate under a new banner—EconoMax.

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Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” investing advice series. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you our specific advice on successful investing. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investing advice and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Tip of the week: “Short selling stocks may seem like a potential money-making opportunity, but there are pitfalls that don’t exist when you’re buying stocks.”...

Dividends don’t always get the respect they deserve, especially from beginning investors. A dividend stock’s yearly 2% or 3% or 5% yield barely seems worth mentioning alongside yearly capital gains of 10%, 20% or 30% or more. Yet dividends are far more reliable than capital gains. A stock that pays a dividend of $1 this year will probably do the same next year. It may even rise to $1.05....

Many young people begin investing with the mistaken notion that a single big idea can make them rich. For some, the big idea is stumbling upon an investment that provides a 1,000-to-1 return. For others, it’s a technique that provides sure-fire investment decisions, or an investing course or guru that promises instant riches. If you ask investors who have a few decades of successful investing behind them, however, few if any will credit their success to any one investment or investing technique. Instead, most will talk about the value of everyday qualities like patience, consistency and a healthy sense of skepticism—in short, the kind of qualities that bring success in all aspects of life, not just investing....

Today’s market volatility and economic uncertainty around the globe is making some investors wonder how much cash they should hold. My investment advice is to look at the longer term and not just at current conditions, or at today’s headlines. Remember, much of what we read today remains speculation....

Our first item raises an interesting question: How does LinkedIn compare to Facebook? Neither one has immediate appeal as an investment. After all, both are good examples of in-the-limelight stocks. That is, both trade at high prices that reflect excessive investor expectations. Prices of in-the-limelight stocks can rise substantially if they remain in the broker/media limelight and continue to generate news that maintains investor enthusiasm. But when the news turns negative, these stocks can drop like stones. Stocks can drop out of the limelight and experience steep stock-price declines yet still go on to great business success. Some wind up like Microsoft. It has more than tripled its per-share profit in the past dozen years, but its stock price is within the same trading range as it was 12 years ago. At both times it was well below the peak it hit in the Internet boom of the late 1990s....

If I had to sum up today’s market outlook in just a few words, I might say, “It’s another ‘Death of Equities’ situation.” Depending on how long you’ve been following the market, you may recall hearing about an August 1979 Business Week cover story entitled “The Death of Equities.” The story got little attention when it came out, because the title echoed the feelings of a lot of observers. But as the great rise of the 1980s and 1990s progressed, the article turned into an icon of famous-last-words/how-wrong-they-can-be. Many individual investors had turned against the stock market by 1979. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was stuck in a narrow trading range for much of the year. It was down 15% from the all-time peak it hit in 1976. Worse, the stock market had been going sideways within a wide range for more than a decade. Investing publications were full of two kinds of stories: 1. the dismal outlook for stocks; 2. how to invest in diamonds, art, collectors’ coins, antiques and other collectibles....