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

You can see our Safety-Conscious Stock Portfolio for February 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: The BMO Low Volatility Canadian Equity ETF, $41.20, symbol ZLB on Toronto (Units outstanding: 71.1 million; Market cap: $2.9 billion; www.etfs.bmo.com), provides exposure to a low beta-weighted portfolio of Canadian stocks....
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of most vacation plans. However, with the rollout of vaccines and the reopening of the economy, demand for travel rebounded steadily. In fact, while both Wyndham Hotels and Travel + Leisure plunged along with the market in March 2020, both regained all the ground they lost by the end of 2020....
DOCUSIGN INC., $59.25, symbol DOCU on Nasdaq, provides its 1.32 million paying customers and over a billion users with a cloud-based software suite that automates the agreement process. Founded in 2003, it generates most of its revenues from its e-signature solution, the world’s leading e-signature product....
PAGERDUTY INC., $29.40, is a buy. The company (symbol PD on New York) operates a platform that collects real-time data from software systems and devices and then notifies its IT customers of any incident that could harm their operations.

PagerDuty’s platform sits on top of a company’s technology systems, taking in data....
CANADIAN TIRE CORP., $161.89, Toronto symbol CTC.A, is a top pick for 2023.

Investors benefit from the company’s 504 Canadian Tire stores. They sell automotive parts and services, and household and sporting goods; franchisees run most of the locations....
MCDONALD’S CORP., $272.46, New York symbol MCD, is your #1 Conservative Buy for 2023.

The company is the world’s largest fast-food chain with over 40,000 restaurants in 119 countries. It serves a wide variety of food but is best known for its hamburgers and french fries.

In 2022, the company continued to prosper despite several challenges, including the sale of its outlets in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19 lockdowns in China (which have since eased)....
CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAY CO., $157.51, Toronto symbol CNR, remains a buy.

CN operates Canada’s largest railway. Its 29,900-kilometre network stretches across the country. It also travels down through the U.S. Midwest, connecting Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

The company’s revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 rose 21.0%, to $4.54 billion from $3.75 billion a year earlier....
A: The Invesco S&P SmallCap Health Care ETF, $139.65, symbol PSCH on Nasdaq (Units outstanding: 2.4 million; Market cap: $335.2 million; www.invesco.com), invests in smaller U.S. firms involved in the health-care industry....
Here’s Part Two of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in October 2022:

“Side-stepping the Thucydides Trap

Thucydides was a fourth-century BC Athenian historian and general. He’s remembered for his book about the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens)....