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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However, the stock has moved down 16% since the start of 2026. That’s partly due to concerns the big jump in oil prices due to the Iran war could hurt consumer spending on travel and entertainment. Fears that new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered services will weaken demand for traditional payment-processing services have also weighed on the stock.
This month, we are updating our WSSF Portfolio for Income-Seeking Investors.
This portfolio is a good starting point for investors who need income. It’s also a starting point for conservative investors, since regular dividends are an indicator of investment quality.
South Bow Corp. $52.06, symbol SOBO on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 208.6 million; Market cap: $10.9 billion; Utilities sector; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 5.2%; www.southbow.com) operates a 4,900-kilometre pipeline network that pumps crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and the U.S. Gulf Coast.
That network includes the Keystone pipeline, which ships about 15% of Western Canadian oil to the U.S.
TC Energy Corp. $95.85, symbol TRP on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 1.04 billion; Market cap: $99.9 billion; Utilities sector; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.6%; www.tcenergy.com) was originally formed in 1951 as TransCanada PipeLines to pump natural gas from Alberta to eastern Canada.
Over the next few decades, the company expanded its operations in Canada and the U.S., including its 1998 acquisition of NOVA Corp.’s pipeline operations.
Many utilities plan to meet that demand with natural gas. In fact, TC expects gas demand from North American power producers to jump 23%—from 44 billion cubic feet per day in 2024 to 54 billion by 2035. Canada’s push to expand liquefied natural gas exports to Asia and other global markets should add another source of growth for the company.