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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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.
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This is a partial description of the momentum approach to stock market investing. Essentially, under that strategy, you buy stocks that are rising and reporting rising earnings, or earnings gains that beat expectations. You then sell when the stocks quit rising or when earnings growth stalls.
This approach would work great if nobody else ever thought of it.
Going forward, the company is in a great position to profit from favourable long-term demographic trends such as an aging population. The sale of its Dental unit last year has also sharpened Steris’s focus on more lucrative markets.
I asked our Successful Investor research department to draw up this Inner Circle Spotlight report on the stock. It explains why we see the stock as a solid addition to any investor’s portfolio. We hope you enjoy and profit from this Spotlight on Steris.
Wayfair’s customers span a wide range of demographics, with annual household incomes ranging from $25,000 to over $250,000. They also include business professionals, from small startups to global enterprises.
The company tries to appeal to customers with different tastes, styles, buying goals and budgets when shopping for their homes and businesses. To that end, it offers a family of websites, each with a unique brand identity and product lineup.
WSP’s projects—both those recently completed and those ongoing—are varied. They include a two-million-square-foot Children’s hospital in Atlanta; a 1,325 megawatts offshore wind farm in Italy; a 12-storey shipping centre in Hong Kong; and National Bank’s new 40-storey head office in Montreal.
In October 2025, the company completed the acquisition of Ricardo plc, a U.K.-based global consulting firm with two units: