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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Dear Inner Circle Member,


Venture-capital investing gets a lot of attention these days. This is partly due to the success of a couple of hundred so-called “unicorns”—venture-backed startups that have reached a value of $1 billion or more. These success stories include companies you may have heard of or done business with, such as Uber, AirBnB, Spotify, Dropbox, Pinterest, Houzz, Blue Apron, Jawbone, Human Longevity, 23andMe and Eventbrite....
A: TrovaGene Inc., $0.76, symbol TROV on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 31.0 million; Market cap: $25.4 million; www.trovagene.com), develops and sells non-invasive, liquid biopsy tests to detect and monitor serious illnesses, including cancer.


The company believes that its exclusive technology positions it to benefit from a change in the way diagnostic medicine is practiced....
A: Dream Global REIT, $10.49, symbol DRG.UN on Toronto (Units outstanding: 124.9 million; Market cap: $1.5 billion; www.dream.ca/global), is a Canadian real estate investment trust that focuses on investing outside the country....
A: OBL Superfuel has been billed by its promoters (Dr. Kent Moors and an array of web sites) as “the White Gold that’s 1,693 times more powerful than gasoline.”


The OBL fuel (somehow an acronym for “Oro Blanco,” white gold in Spanish) turns out to be lithium, which is used to fuel electric-car batteries.


The stock featured in the OBL promotion is likely Lithium X Energy, $1.99, symbol LIX on the Toronto Venture Exchange (Shares outstanding: 74.1 million; Market cap: $144.4 million; www.lithium-x.com)....
A: Bearing Lithium, $0.76, symbol BRZ on the Toronto Venture Exchange (Shares outstanding: 24.8 million; Market cap: $18.4 million; www.bearingresources.ca), will buy U.S.-based Li3 Energy Inc. to gain an interest in the advanced-stage Maricunga lithium project in Chile....
Dear Inner Circle Member,


In the 18th century, pioneer economist Adam Smith (author of The Wealth of Nations) wrote that the public tends to overvalue what he called “speculative ventures.” The world has changed a lot since then, but his warning still applies, especially to penny mining stocks....
A: Shaw Communications, $28.73, symbol SJR.B on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 487.6 million; Market cap: $14.0 billion; www.shaw.ca), is one of the largest cable-television operators in Canada. It’s also a provider of satellite TV, high-speed Internet, and telephone services.


Shaw entered the data-centre business through the acquisition of ViaWest in July 2014 for $1.2 billion U.S....
A: Westshore Terminals Investment Corp., $21.76, symbol WTE on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 73.3 million; Market cap: $1.6 billion; www.westshore.com), owns a coal storage and loading terminal at Roberts Bank, B.C., about 30 kilometres south of Vancouver....
A: We’ve long advised holding 20% or more of your portfolio in U.S. stocks. We see exposure to U.S. stocks, and the U.S. dollar, as a valuable form of diversification. It also gives you a hedge against a drop in the Canadian dollar, especially if you hold your stocks in a U.S.-dollar brokerage account.


Canadian shareholders pay a 15% withholding tax on dividends from U.S....
Dear Inner Circle Member,


In the last century, or maybe the one before, someone said you should “…never pick a fight with anybody who buys ink by the barrel.” The quote was long attributed to U.S. author/humourist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), who is more widely known by his pen name, Mark Twain....