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
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.
A: Freeport-McMoRan Inc., $47.11, symbol FCX on New York (Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $64.8 billion; www.fcx.com), is one of the world’s largest publicly traded copper producers with operations in Indonesia, North America and South America. The company has significant reserves of copper, gold, and molybdenum.


In Indonesia, Freeport’s assets include the Grasberg minerals district in Papua. Grasberg is one of the world’s largest copper and gold deposits.
A: Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF, $206.31, symbol VIG on New York (Units outstanding: 451.3 million; Market cap: $93.1 billion; www.vanguard.com), aims to track the S&P U.S. Dividend Growers Index.


That index is comprised of a group of 337 stocks that have had at least 10 consecutive years of increasing annual dividend payments. That means the index excludes several sound companies that pay dividends but haven’t increased them annually.
A: Ashland Inc., $54.30, symbol ASH on New York (Shares outstanding: 45.7 million; Market cap: $2.4 billion; www.ashland.com), is a global provider of specialty additives and ingredients. The company serves both consumer and industrial markets, including others focused on architectural coatings, construction, energy, food and beverage, personal care, and pharmaceuticals. It has over 3,200 employees worldwide and customers in more than 100 countries.


Ashland has four operating segments: Life Sciences (38% of revenue), Personal Care (30%), Specialty Additives (27%), and Intermediates (5%).
A: Constellation Energy Corp., $313.52, symbol CEG on New York (Shares outstanding: 313.4 million; Market cap: $99.8 billion; www.constellationenergy.com), is the largest producer of emissions-free energy in the U.S. The company is a leading supplier of electricity to businesses, homes, and public-sector customers.

Constellation was spun off by Exelon Corp. on February 1, 2022.

The company’s nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar generation facilities have the capacity to power 16 million homes. They provide about 10% of the clean energy in the U.S.
From time to time, readers and clients ask what they should do when stocks they own drop in price. Here’s one related question we sometimes hear:
“What’s the difference between ‘averaging down’ and ‘averaging in’?”

The short answer is “not much,” at least on the surface. The longer but more accurate answer is that both aim to gain by reacting in a consistent way to stock price fluctuations, while neglecting the fact that short-term fluctuations expose you to a substantial random element. The random element can work for you or against you.
WARNER MUSIC GROUP CORP., $29.39, is a buy. The company’s shares (symbol WMG on Nasdaq) began trading on June 3, 2020, following its IPO.

Warner Music is one of the world’s leading music entertainment companies. Its record labels include Atlantic Records, Warner Records, and Elektra Records....
BOMBARDIER INC., Toronto symbols BBD.A $149.68 and BBD.B $149.75, is still a hold.

The company now focuses solely on making private luxury and business jet planes following the January 2021 sale of its passenger railcar business to France’s Alstom SA.

The stock jumped over 25% this week after Bombardier announced a major new order from an undisclosed buyer.

This deal has firm orders for 50 of the company’s Challenger and Global jets worth $1.7 billion (all amounts except share prices in U.S....