Visa Inc.

VISA INC. $116 (New York symbol V; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 813.3 million; Market cap: $94.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 9.8; Dividend yield: 0.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest retail electronic payments network. The company processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands.

Visa’s credit cards are accepted around the world. Visa/PLUS is one of the largest global automated teller machine networks, offering cash access in more than 200 countries.

The company first sold shares to the public at $44; it began trading on New York in March 2008.

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VISA INC. $116 (New York symbol V; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 813.3 million; Market cap: $94.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 9.8; Dividend yield: 0.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest retail electronic payments network. The company processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands.

Visa’s credit cards are accepted around the world. Visa/PLUS is one of the largest global automated teller machine networks, offering cash access in more than 200 countries.

The company first sold shares to the public at $44; it began trading on New York in March 2008.

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TORSTAR CORP. $8.96 (www.torstar.com) recently bought Heartsong Presents Book Club, a publisher of Christian romance novels, for an undisclosed sum through its Harlequin book-publishing subsidiary. This purchase nicely complements Harlequin’s “Love Inspired” line of inspirational novels. Best Buy. PENGROWTH ENERGY CORP. $9.90 (www.pengrowth.com) will focus on developing its western Canadian oil properties in 2012. Due to lower natural gas prices, it will hold off on further investments in its gas properties during the year. Buy. ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $54 (www.rbc.com) has formed a new alliance with Shoppers Drug Mart, which operates over 1,200 drug stores in Canada. Under the deal, Shoppers’ customers can use a new Royal Bank Visa credit card to earn reward points on their purchases. The bank will also install 300 new automated teller machines in Shoppers’ stores. Buy.

VISA INC. $99 (www.visa.com) has raised its quarterly dividend by 46.7%, to $0.22 a share from $0.15. The new annual rate of $0.88 yields just 0.9%. However, Visa should continue to profit as more consumers pay for their purchases with credit cards instead of cash and cheques. Best Buy. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. $17 (www.ge.com) continues to report lower loan losses at its lending division. As a result, GE has raised its quarterly dividend by 13.3%, to $0.17 a share from $0.15. The new annual rate of $0.68 yields 4.0%. Buy. BOEING CO. $70 (www.boeing.com) has raised its quarterly dividend by 4.8%, to $0.44 a share from $0.42. The new annual rate of $1.76 yields 2.5%. The company also received an order from Southwest Airlines for 150 of its new 737 MAX passenger jets and 58 other planes. The deal is worth $19 billion, or 29% of Boeing annual revenue of $66 billion. Buy.

Canada’s big five banks avoided the problems with subprime mortgages and European sovereign debt that have crippled many of the world’s largest financial firms. The big banks are now using their strong balance sheets to make acquisitions, often at bargain prices, and to upgrade their holdings. ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $45 (Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $63.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.8; Dividend yield: 4.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rbc.com) is Canada’s largest bank, with $730.6 billion of assets....

WAL-MART STORES INC. $57 (New York symbol WMT; Conservative Growth Portfolio: Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 3.5 billion; Market cap: $199.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 2.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.walmart.com) had to temporarily shut down 13 of its stores in the Chinese city of Chongqing over charges that these outlets sold regular pork as higher-priced organic meat. The company entered China in 1996. It now operates 346 stores in that country. Food safety is a sensitive issue in China, and Wal-Mart is co-operating with local officials. That should prevent any permanent damage to its brand, and limit any loss of its Chinese market share. Wal-Mart is a buy....

We still think investors will profit most — and with the least risk — by buying shares of well-established, dividend-paying stocks with strong business prospects. These are companies that have strong positions in healthy industries. They also have strong management that will make the right moves to remain competitive in a changing marketplace. Stocks like these give investors an additional measure of safety in today’s volatile markets. And the best ones offer an attractive combination of low p/e’s (the ratio of a stock’s price to its per-share earnings), steady or rising dividend yields (annual dividend divided by the share price) and promising growth prospects....

A long-time reader and portfolio-management client recently asked a question that other investors may wonder about in today’s turbulent markets. He wrote, “You constantly remind members to have a balanced portfolio and strategy for long-term success when investing. But when do you take profits? You have mentioned a couple of times to sell, such as when a stock makes up too much of your total portfolio, or if a company shows questionable management or business decisions. My main question is why don’t we sell when stocks move up and there are profits to be had?” I often asked myself that question in my first decade or two in the investment business. In hindsight, it always seems easy to spot market tops and market bottoms. But trying to spot those tops and bottoms as they occur is harder. I investigated all sorts of market theories and signals that purport to tell you how to do it. They all seem to have “worked,” at least some of the time. But none worked consistently....

One of the strong points of Canadian investing in the past few years has been the reliability of our financial institutions compared to those in many other countries. That can even apply to companies that appear risky at first glance. Home Capital Group Inc. (Toronto symbol HCG; www.homecapital.com) offers mortgages to borrowers who don’t meet the stricter criteria of larger, traditional lenders. Even though Home Capital caters to riskier borrowers, it has avoided the huge credit losses that have crippled many U.S. banks. That’s because it continues to do a good job of identifying problem loans early. It then uses this information to restructure a borrower’s repayment terms and adjust its lending policies....

TORONTO-DOMINION BANK, $71.10, Toronto symbol TD, has agreed to buy MBNA’s Canadian credit card operations from Bank of America (New York symbol BAC). This purchase will add 1.8 million customers to TD’s roughly 4.0 million credit-card accounts. MBNA is also the largest issuer of MasterCard cards in Canada, which will diversify TD’s Visa cards. TD will pay $8.5 billion for MBNA’s Canadian credit-card operations when the deal closes, probably early next year. To put that in context, TD earned $5.2 billion, or $5.77 a share, in its 2010 fiscal year, which ended October 31, 2010....