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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If you’re like most investors, you should invest the major portion of your money in stocks from our Conservative Growth Portfolio. But you may want to add some stocks from our Aggressive Growth Portfolio, which we update in this issue.
Understandably, falling interest rates spark demand for dividend-paying stocks. That’s because lower rates generally reduce the income investors receive from their fixed-income investments.
While falling interest rates spur fresh demand for dividend-paying stocks, don’t forget about the hugely positive impact of share buybacks. (See below for one IC member’s question.)
Pacer defines free cash flow as the cash remaining after a company has paid expenses, interest, taxes, and long-term investments. Free cash flow can then be used to buy back stock, pay dividends, or participate in mergers and acquisitions.
Founded in 1887 and incorporated in Minnesota in 1915, the company sells its products in over 140 countries. Its sales operations span 35 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, India, the Middle East, and Africa.
Fuller’s core product is industrial adhesive. The company’s customers use its glues in the making of common consumer and industrial goods, including food and beverage containers, disposable diapers, medical products, windows, sportswear and footwear.