Topic: How To Invest

Q: Hi, Pat. My question concerns TD Bank. Specifically, with TD being the second-largest bank in Canada, and having the biggest presence in the U.S., you would think that its share price would be up well over $100 like the other big bank shares. Is there a specific reason why it is lagging so far behind the others? I would have thought it would be up around the price of, say, Royal Bank, at least. Thank you as always for your great insight and advice!

Article Excerpt

A: The share price, in and of itself, is a somewhat arbitrary way to look at the worth of a stock. For instance, CP Rail recently split its shares on a 5-for-1 basis. That means that its share price is now $90.86—rather than the $454.30 it would be if the split hadn’t occurred. However, shareholders still hold an equivalent stake in the company—the market capitalization of CP Rail (shares outstanding times the current price) is unchanged. Looking at TD Bank, $83.33, symbol TD on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 1.8 billion; Market cap: $151.5 billion; www.td.com), it’s noteworthy that it’s the only one of the Big Five banks to have a stock split in the last 10 years—the stock split 2-for-1 in 2014. Without that split, the stock would be well over $100 at this point. Meanwhile, TD Bank has grown to be Canada’s second-largest bank as measured by its market cap. That’s a better measure of the value of a company/bank and places TD just…