How To Invest

In addition, Pat thinks then beginner investors should cultivate two important qualities: a healthy sense of skepticism and patience.

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Investors should approach all investments with a healthy sense of skepticism. This can help keep you out of fraudulent stocks that masquerade as high-quality stocks. It will also keep you out of legally operated, but poorly managed, companies that promise more than they can possibly deliver.

If you are a new investor, you should also realize that losing patience can cause you to sell your best choices right before a big rise. All too often, investors buy a promising stock just as it enters a period of price stagnation. Even the best-performing stocks run into these unpredictable phases from time to time. They move mainly sideways in a wide range for months or years before their next big rise begins. (Stock brokers often refer to these stocks as “dead money.”)

If you lack patience, you run a big risk of selling your best choices in the midst of one of these phases, prior to the next big move upward. If you lose patience and sell, you are particularly likely to do so in the low end of the trading range, when stock prices have weakened and confidence in the stock has waned.

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How To Invest Library Archives
Here’s Part One of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in February 2023:


“When new business ideas come along, many investors get over-excited. They see the growth potential right away, but it takes them longer to spot the negatives....
KIMBERLY CLARK CORP., $145.18, symbol KMB on New York, is a leading maker of personal-care and tissue products. Its brands include Huggies, Kleenex, Scott, Kotex, Cottonelle, Poise, Depend, Andrex, Pull-Ups, GoodNites, Intimus, Neve, Plenitud, Viva and WypAll.

The consumer goods giant has been in business for 151 years and its wide range of family, baby, and feminine care brands are sold in over 175 countries....
BROADRIDGE FINANCIAL SOLUTIONS INC., $152.87, is a buy. The company, symbol BR on New York, serves the investment industry in three main areas: investor communications, securities processing, and transaction clearing.

Broadridge is best known for processing and distributing proxies and regulatory filings for nearly every publicly traded U.S....
IMPERIAL OIL LTD., $62.34, Toronto symbol IMO, is a buy.

This company gets about 90% of its production from oil sands operations in Alberta. Imperial also has conventional oil and natural gas operations in the West and holds stakes in offshore projects in Atlantic Canada.

Its other operations include three refineries (one in Alberta, two in Ontario) and a petrochemical plant in Sarnia, Ontario.

With the July 2023 payment, Imperial will raise your quarterly dividend by 13.6%, to $0.50 a share from $0.44....
J.P. MORGAN CHASE & CO., $136.74, New York symbol JPM, remains a buy.

The stock lets investors tap the largest banking firm in the U.S., with total assets of $3.74 trillion as of March 31, 2023.

This week, Morgan agreed to acquire most of the assets and deposits of California-based First Republic Bank, as well as some of its liabilities, from the U.S....
TORONTO-DOMINION BANK, $83.80, Toronto symbol TD, remains a buy.

Due to delays securing the necessary regulatory approvals, TD has cancelled its deal to acquire First Horizon Corporation (New York symbol FHN) for $13.4 billion U.S. The purchase would have made TD’s banking operations the sixth largest in the U.S.

As a result, the bank will pay $225 million U.S....

You Can See Our Safety-Conscious Stock Portfolio For May 2023 here.


We think investors will profit most—and with the least risk—by buying shares of well-established companies with strong business prospects and strong positions in healthy industries....
A: Kellogg Company, $70.74, symbol K on New York, (Shares outstanding: 341.8 million; Market cap: $24.2 billion; Consumer sector; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.kelloggs.com), is a major maker of food products in North America and the rest of the world.

The company’s principal products are snacks such as crackers, savory snacks, toaster pastries, cereal bars, granola bars and bites; and convenience foods such as ready-to-eat cereals, frozen waffles, veggie foods and noodles.

These products are manufactured in 21 countries and marketed in more than 180 countries....
This week’s Spotlight analysis of Alimentation Couche-Tard shows that the potentially risky tactic of growth-by-acquisition can pay off nicely when a well-managed company applies that strategy conservatively in a fragmented industry with low-risk takeover opportunities.

We first recommended Alimentation Couche-Tard in December 2008, at $15.50 a share....
LULULEMON ATHLETICA, $379.93, symbol LULU on Nasdaq, is a designer and retailer of yoga-inspired athletic clothing and accessories, including pants, shorts, tops, jackets and footwear. The company caters to women and men. Lululemon also sells fitness hardware and services through its “Lululemon Studio.”

The company sells under the lululemon athletica and ivivva athletica brand names....