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
A: Exco Technologies Ltd., $7.30, symbol XTC on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 38.9 million; Market cap: $286.0 million; www.excocorp.com), operates in two segments: Automotive Solutions, and Casting and Extrusion.

Based in Markham, Ontario, Exco was founded in 1952....
In the second half of the 1990s, Walmart was a broker/media market favourite. It rose from around $10 a share in the mid-1990s, to around $70 by the start of the year 2000. Back then, Walmart stock was still featured in the broker/media limelight, and its P/E (per-share price to earnings ratio) was close to 50.0 to 1.0.

After that, a 17-year lull set in....
IAMGOLD CORP., $1.51, is a buy for aggressive investors. The company (symbol IMG on Toronto) owns 90% of the Essakane mine in Burkina Faso; 100% of the Westwood mine in Quebec; and 95% of the Rosebel mine in Suriname. IAMGold also holds 92.5% of the Cote gold project.

IAMGold reports that its Essakane mine, which is located approximately 330 kilometres northeast of Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, continues to operate unaffected despite the evolving political situation in the country.

On September 30, Burkina Faso military leader President Paul-Henri Damiba was deposed in the country’s second coup in a year, as army Captain Ibrahim Traore took charge, dissolving the transitional government and suspending the constitution.

Captain Traore says that a group of officers had decided to remove Damiba due to his inability to deal with an armed uprising in the country that has worsened in the past nine months.

Meanwhile, a new government is unlikely to disrupt operations at the Essakane mine....
ORACLE CORPORATION, $63.29, symbol ORCL on Nasdaq, is one of the world’s largest software providers. It started in database software but has since branched out to enterprise resource planning, human capital management, customer relationship management, and more....
ALGONQUIN POWER & UTILITIES CORP., $14.74, Toronto symbol AQN, is a top pick for 2022.

The company has two main businesses: the Regulated Services Group provides regulated electricity, gas, water distribution and wastewater collection services in Canada, the U.S., Chile, and Bermuda; and the Renewable Power Group produces electricity from about 40 clean-energy plants in North America.

Algonquin last raised your quarterly dividend with the July 2022 payment....
CONAGRA BRANDS INC., $32.85, New York symbol CAG, is a buy.

Through your shares, you tap the maker of some of North America’s most popular food brands. They include Chef Boyardee canned pasta, Hunt’s tomato sauce, Orville Redenbacher popcorn and Reddi-wip whipped cream.

Conagra reported stronger-than-expected quarterly results, mainly because the company raised its selling prices to offset increasing costs for ingredients, packaging and shipping.

Its sales in its fiscal 2023 first quarter, ended August 28, 2022, rose 9.5%, to $2.90 billion from $2.65 billion a year earlier....
SUNCOR ENERGY INC., $45.04, Toronto symbol SU, remains a buy.

The company is Canada’s largest integrated oil firm, with major projects in the Alberta oil sands. Suncor also operates four refineries (three in Canada and one in Colorado), along with 1,875 Petro-Canada gas stations.

Suncor has agreed to sell its renewable power projects in Alberta and Ontario to Canadian Utilities (see below).

The company will receive $730 million for these assets when it completes the sale in the first quarter of 2023....
A: iShares Core MSCI Canadian Quality Dividend Index ETF, $23.46, symbol XDIV on Toronto (Units outstanding: 30.4 million; Market cap: $713.2 million; www.blackrock.com/ca), tracks the MSCI Canada High Dividend Yield 10% Security Capped Index.

This index aims to invest in Canadian stocks with above-average dividend yields and steady or increasing dividends....
A: PerkinElmer Inc., $128.75, symbol PKI on New York (Shares outstanding: 126.2 million; Market cap: $15.7 billion; Manufacturing sector; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.perkinelmer.com), manufactures analytical and genetic testing equipment, diagnostic tools, and other products and services for the life sciences, food, environmental, and related industries.

In September 2021, the company completed the acquisition of BioLegend, a leading provider of life-science antibodies and reagents....
A: Kellogg Company, $72.22, symbol K on New York, (Shares outstanding: 340.1 million; Market cap: $24.2 billion; 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....