Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of November 26, 2013?

Article Excerpt

One of the more reassuring aspects of the rise now underway in the stock market is that the strength is concentrated in well-established companies. Investors are bidding up the prices of stocks with a history of sales and earnings, if not dividends. Speculative areas like penny stocks, new issues, junior techs and so on appear to be out of investor fashion. This contrasts sharply with, say, the income-trust boom of the mid-2000s. Back then, investors were plunging into new issue income trusts, many of which were of low investment quality. Today’s situation contrasts even more with the Internet stock mania of the late 1990s. Many of the new issue Internet stocks back then were little more than stock promotions. Chasing after low-quality investments like these becomes common when inexperienced investors enter the market. These newcomers lack the healthy sense of skepticism that you need to succeed as an investor. So they naturally zero in on the least desirable stocks on the market…