How To Invest

In addition, Pat thinks then beginner investors should cultivate two important qualities: a healthy sense of skepticism and patience.

[text_ad]

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.

[text_ad]

Read More Close
How To Invest Library Archives
A: Whitecap Resources, $10.05, symbol WCP on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 368.9 million; Market cap: $3.7 billion; www.wcap.ca), produces and explores for oil and natural gas in Western Canada....
A: UrtheCast Corp., $1.27, symbol UR on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 104.7 million; Market cap: $150.9 million; www.urthecast.com), is a Vancouver-based technology company that serves the rapidly evolving geospatial and geoanalytics markets.


The company operates Earth Observation sensors in space, including two satellites, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2....
Dear Inner Circle member,


Here’s the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in late April:


“To succeed as an investor, you need to be able to “cut through the noise”. That is, you need to sort through the news to find what’s worth your attention, and disregard the rest....
A: Trican Well Service, $4.23, symbol TCW on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 193.2 million; Market cap: $790.0 million; www.tricanwellservice.com), provides specialized products, equipment and services that are used during the exploration and drilling of oil and gas reserves.


In 2015 and 2016, the company discontinued its other operations in Canada (related to completion tools services), Russia (related to pressure pumping operations and completion tools services), the U.S....
A: Spartan Energy, $2.40, symbol SPE on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 344.9 million; Market cap: $1.3 billion; www.spartanenergy.ca), develops, produces and explores for oil and natural gas, mostly in Saskatchewan.


Spartan Energy is led by the former management of Spartan Oil....
A: Laurentian Bank of Canada, $54.27, Toronto symbol LB (Shares outstanding: 33.9 million; Market cap: $1.8 billion; www.laurentianbank.ca), is Canada’s eight-largest publicly traded bank, with total assets of $43.1 billion.


Laurentian Bank is mainly focused on operations in Quebec and Ontario....
Dear Inner Circle Member,


One of our three key rules for stock market success is to downplay or avoid stocks that are in the broker/media limelight. The problem with stocks in the limelight is that investors tend to build up excessive expectations for them....
A: K92 Mining, $0.72, symbol KNT on the TSX Venture Exchange (Shares outstanding: 89.7 million; Market cap: $64.6 million; www.k92mining.com), has as its principal project the Kainantu gold mine located in the Eastern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea....
A: On a broad level, funds that specialize in small-cap stocks are always more volatile. However, some small caps do offer above-average potential—like those we recommend in Stock Pickers Digest.


Incidentally, we think it’s a mistake to generalize about small cap stocks....
A: Mazor Robotics (ADR), $39.80, symbol MZOR on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 24.0 million; Market cap: $955.2 million; www.mazorrobotics.com), is an Israel-based company that develops and markets computerized and imaging-based systems used for spine and brain surgeries.


The company operates in the field of computer-assisted surgery that enables the use of surgical instruments with high precision and minimal invasiveness....