wall street

Dear Inner Circle member,

Here’s the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in late October:

“Emergency government measures can have unpleasant, unforeseeable side effects for the economy and investors. But you need a long-term perspective to see the link between cause and effect.

The 2008/2009 financial crisis was the world’s worst financial upset since the 1930s....

A: Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF, $142.61, symbol VCR on New York, aims to track the MSCI US Investable Market Consumer Discretionary 25/50 Index. It’s an index that invests in U.S. consumer discretionary companies. These firms are in manufacturing and service industries that tend to be the most sensitive to economic cycles....

Payment processing firm Square Inc. not only competes with Apple and PayPal, it’s also expanding its business loans subsidiary and aiming to found a bank.

TRILOGY ENERGY (Toronto symbol TET; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) has now been taken over by PARAMOUNT RESOURCES $24.64 (Toronto symbol POU; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (403-290-3600; www. paramountres.com; Shares outstanding: 134.7 million; Market cap: $3.3 billion; No dividends paid).

Under the deal, Trilogy shareholders got 0.267 of a Paramount share for each Trilogy share they owned.

Over the last two years, Paramount has sold assets worth more than $2.5 billion and paid off all of its debt.

The company has now expanded, through both the Trilogy takeover and its recent purchase of Apache Canada Ltd....

DOMINO’S PIZZA $197.58 (New York symbol DPZ; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (734-930- 3008; www.dominos.com; Shares outstanding: 48.3 million; Market cap: $9.5 billion; Dividend yield: 0.9%) has teamed up with automaker Ford Motor Co. (symbol F on New York, and a recommendation of our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter) to test a new system to deliver pizza by self-driving cars.

During these trials, a Ford engineer will be in the driver’s seat....

A: Square Inc., $25.15, symbol SQ on New York (Shares outstanding: 382.6 million; Market cap: $9.6 billion; www.squareup.com), provides payment processing services to over 3 million merchants in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, Ireland and the U.K.

The company supplies clients of all sizes with a square-shaped card reader that plugs into their smartphones or tablets....

A: Procter & Gamble Co., $92.60, symbol PG on New York (Shares outstanding: 2.6 billion; Market cap: $240.8 billion; www.pg.com), is a recommendation of our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter.

The company is one of the world’s largest makers of household and personal-care goods....

AMAZON.COM $978.18 (Nasdaq symbol AMZN; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (206-266-1000; www.amazon. com; Shares outstanding: 480.4 million; Market cap: $469.9 billion; No dividends paid) has reached a deal with the troubled Sears Holdings Corp. (symbol SHLD on Nasdaq) to allow the department store chain to sell its Kenmore- branded appliances on Amazon’s websites....

Here’s the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in late July:



“Often, one or more big or key idea(s) provide the stock market with its main direction.



Many investors instinctively try to spot these big ideas....

SHOPIFY INC. $115.97 (Toronto symbol SHOP; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (613-241-2828; www.shopify.ca; Shares o/s: 90.7 million; Market cap: $10.8 billion; No dividend) offers merchants of all sizes Internet-based software to design and manage sales at their stores, websites and many other channels.


Shopify will soon add eBay (symbol EBAY on Nasdaq and a recommendation of Wall Street Stock Forecaster) to its growing number of sales channels.


This means that when shoppers use eBay to buy something from a Shopify merchant, their orders automatically go to Shopify for processing....