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
MCDONALD’S CORP., $274.52, New York symbol MCD, is a buy.

The company is the world’s largest fast-food chain with 40,000 restaurants in 119 countries. It serves a wide variety of food but is best known for its hamburgers and french fries. Franchisees own roughly 95% of those outlets.

McDonald’s has raised its annual dividend rate each year since 1976....
WYNDHAM HOTELS & RESORTS INC., $76.16, New York symbol WH, is a buy. The company is the world’s largest hotel franchiser, with 836,000 rooms spread across 9,100 hotels in 95 countries. Its portfolio of 23 brands includes Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada, La Quinta and Wyndham....
CUMMINS INC., $244.78, symbol CMI on New York, designs, manufactures, distributes and services diesel, natural gas, electric, hybrid powertrains, and powertrain-related components, including control & fuel systems, automated transmissions, batteries, electrified power systems, hydrogen production, and fuel cell systems.

Cummins serves customers in 190 countries through 500 company-owned and independent distributors and through 9,000 dealers.

In August 2022, the company completed the acquisition of Meritor Inc....
ALPHABET INC., Nasdaq symbols GOOG $96.58 [class C: non-voting] and GOOGL $96.29 [class A: one vote per share], is your #1 Aggressive Buy for 2022.

The stock is the parent of Google, the world’s leading Internet search engine. It gets most of its revenue from online advertising.

In addition to search, Google also offers a variety of other services and products....
CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY LTD., $100.53, Toronto symbol CP, is your #1 Conservative Buy for 2022.

CP ships freight over a 23,700-kilometre rail network, mainly between Montreal and Vancouver. It also links to hubs in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.

The company is now in the process of merging with U.S.-based railway Kansas City Southern....
A: The Cooper Companies Inc., $264.34, symbol COO on New York (Shares outstanding: 49.3 million; Market cap: $12.8 billion; Manufacturing sector; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.coopercos.com), is a California-based healthcare business with two operating segments.

The first segment is Cooper Vision (75% of revenues); it manufactures and markets soft contact lenses for the vision-correction market worldwide....
A: Clean Harbors Inc., $119.25, symbol CLH on New York (Shares outstanding: 54.1 million; Market cap: $6.4 billion; Manufacturing sector; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk www.cleanharbors.com), is a provider of hazardous waste solutions, emergency spill response, industrial cleaning and maintenance, and recycling services.

Through its Safety-Kleen business, Clean Harbors is also North America’s largest re-refiner and recycler of used oil and a leading provider of parts washers and environmental services to commercial, industrial and automotive customers.

Founded in 1980 and based in Massachusetts, the company operates in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and India.

Clean Harbors serves a diverse customer base, including most Fortune 500 companies....
Here’s Part Two of the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in July this year:

What’s one more busted supply chain?

It’s natural for businesses to lament the breakdown of the world-spanning supply chains, since it’s costing them money....
CONSTELLATION SOFTWARE INC., $1,881.78, symbol CSU on Toronto, sells software tailored to individual businesses and agencies. It has more than 125,000 customers operating in both the public and private sectors of more than 100 countries.

The company is known for acquiring software companies and then successfully integrating them and adding value....
BIRCHCLIFF ENERGY LTD., $9.97, is a buy for aggressive investors. The company (symbol BIR on Toronto) develops and produces oil and gas, mainly in the Peace River Arch area of both Alberta and B.C. Its average output of 73,746 barrels of oil equivalent per day is 83% natural gas and 17% oil.

Cash flow in the quarter ended June 30, 2022, jumped sharply, to 1.08 a share from $0.34 a year earlier....