Know your financial stocks

Article Excerpt

One of the key tenets of our Successful Investor philosophy is to diversify by spreading your money out across most if not all of the five main economic sectors: Manufacturing & Industry, Resources & Commodities, Consumer, Finance, and Utilities. And as part of your holdings, we continue to recommend that most Canadian investors hold at least two or three of Canada’s Big Five banks (TD Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, CIBC, Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank). Or they could buy ETFs that hold these banks. That’s mainly because of their importance to the Canadian economy, plus their long history of sustainable dividends. Meanwhile, U.S. banks and other financial services firms dropped in early 2020 as the pandemic took hold. But most have since bounced back. Once COVID-19 eventually subsides and economic activity strengthens, the best of these stocks should be even stronger performers. That’s all the more so because the pandemic has accelerated their adoption of cost-cutting digital technologies. The graph below highlights…