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
Stock-market sentiment has become much more widely divided than usual in the past year or so. People in many cases can look at the same sets of facts but interpret them so differently that they arrive at opposing conclusions.

When confronted with unanswerable questions, even successful investors may take an interest in market indicators, trading rules, rules of thumb and other kinds of financial hocus-pocus....
Here’s an Excerpt from a recent issue of Advice for Inner Circle Pro Members:


“Early in my investment career, I developed a keen interest in what we called “investor rules of thumb.” Here are some random examples:


“Stocks trading at a P/E ratio of 10 times per-share earnings or less are good buys.”


“As January goes, so goes the year.” In other words, if the stock market goes up in January, it will probably have a gain for the year, as a whole.


“When a stock rises and its volume of trading expands as well, it’s likely to keep rising.”


The downfall of all market indicators is that they entice you into basing a decision on a narrow range of information....
A: Tourmaline Oil, $19.95, symbol TOU on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 296.6 million; Market cap: $5.9 billion; www.tourmalineoil.com), is a Canadian oil and natural gas exploration, development, and production company....
Alimentation Couche-Tard has rewarded our subscribers with big gains over the years. We first recommended it in our December 2008 issue at $15.50 a share. Since then, the stock has split 3-for-1 and then 2-for-1. That takes our cost down to $2.58 a share—and gives you a tremendous 1,447.7% gain!

Meanwhile, the company’s outlook remains positive, and we think the shares can go a lot higher....
Here’s an Excerpt from a recent issue of Advice for Inner Circle Pro Members:


“Early in my investment career, I developed a keen interest in what we called “investor rules of thumb.” Here are some random examples:


“Stocks trading at a P/E ratio of 10 times per-share earnings or less are good buys.”


“As January goes, so goes the year.” In other words, if the stock market goes up in January, it will probably have a gain for the year, as a whole.


“When a stock rises and its volume of trading expands as well, it’s likely to keep rising.”


The downfall of all market indicators is that they entice you into basing a decision on a narrow range of information....
A: The Fidelity Global Innovators Fund is a mutual fund that aims to invest in companies with the potential to be disruptive innovators. The fund looks globally in its search for top firms that are positioned to successfully apply innovative and emerging technology or that employ innovative business models.


The fund has an MER of 2.30%.

The Fidelity Global Innovators Fund has holdings in 104 companies....
We continue to recommend that most Canadian investors hold at least two or three of Canada’s Big Five banks (TD Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, CIBC, Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank). That’s mainly because of their importance to the Canadian economy, plus their long history of dividend increases.

I asked our Successful Investor research department to draw up this Inner Circle Spotlight report on TD Bank....
Here’s an Excerpt from a recent issue of Advice for Inner Circle Pro Members:


“Early in my investment career, I developed a keen interest in what we called “investor rules of thumb.” Here are some random examples:


“Stocks trading at a P/E ratio of 10 times per share earnings or less are good buys.”


“As January goes, so goes the year.” In other words, if the stock market goes up in January, it will probably have a gain for the year, as a whole.”


“When a stock rises and its volume of trading expands as well, it’s likely to keep rising.”


The downfall of all market indicators is that they entice you into basing a decision on a narrow range of information....

Here’s an Excerpt from a recent issue of Advice for Inner Circle Pro Members:


“Early in my investment career, I developed a keen interest in what we called “investor rules of thumb.” Here are some random examples:


“Stocks trading at a P/E ratio of 10 times per-share earnings or less are good buys.”


“As January goes, so goes the year.” In other words, if the stock market goes up in January, it will probably have a gain for the year, as a whole.


“When a stock rises and its volume of trading expands as well, it’s likely to keep rising.”


The downfall of all market indicators is that they entice you into basing a decision on a narrow range of information....
A: Sabre Corp., $11.94, symbol SABR on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 317.3 million; Market cap: $3.8 billion; www.sabre.com), provides technology to the global travel and tourism industry.

Its software, data, mobile and distribution solutions are used by hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotel properties to manage their critical operations....