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: Evertz Technologies Ltd., $16.72, symbol ET on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 75.6 million; Market cap: $1.3 billion; www.evertz.com), makes video and audio systems for telecommunications and other media industries.


The company sells its hardware and software to content creators, broadcasters, specialty channels and TV service providers....
A: Stella-Jones Inc., $38.24, symbol SJ on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 69.2 million; Market cap: $2.7 billion; www.stella-jones.com), makes pressure-treated wood products. They include: railway ties (36% of sales); utility poles (32%); treated lumber products for the residential market (21%); lumber for industrial uses such as construction timbers and highway guardrails (5%); and logs and lumber (6%).


The company gets most of its utility poles from the timberlands it leases in Quebec and B.C....
A: BSM Technologies Inc., $1.47, symbol GPS on Toronto (Shares outstanding: Shares outstanding: 82.6 million; Market cap: $123.9 million, www.bsmwireless.com) makes equipment and software that helps owners of truck, train and other fleets monitor their vehicles using global positioning systems (GPS).


Customers typically purchase the hardware upfront, and then enter into a long-term contract for software updates and monitoring services....
Dear Inner Circle Member,


If you take a university-level psychology or medical course, you run the risk of “medical student’s disease”. This happens when you read about disease symptoms, and get a sudden fear that they describe something you already suffer from.


A good teacher will tell you that many symptoms in your textbook are exaggerations of normal, everyday fluctuations in your health and vitality....
A: The Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF, $50.29, symbol VGK on New York (Units outstanding: 218.2 million; Market cap: $11.0 billion; www.vanguard.com), holds stocks of companies located in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.


The ETF has a low MER of 0.12%....
A: Energy Fuels Inc., $2.68, symbol EFR on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 66.6 million; Market cap: $178.5 million; www.energyfuels.com), owns two uranium-processing facilities that supply that U3O8 to major nuclear utilities....
A: Uranium Resources Inc., $1.79, symbol URRE on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 24.5 million; Market cap: $43.9 million; www.uraniumresources.com), has begun to develop a lithium business while it waits for uranium prices to move up.


As part of that, the company has bought land holdings in two prospective lithium brine basins in Nevada and Utah....
A: HudBay Minerals Inc., $8.99, symbol HBM on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 237.3 million; Market cap: $2.1 billion; www.hudbayminerals.com), produces base and precious metals including copper, zinc, gold and silver.


The company first sold shares to the public at $2.25 each and began trading on Toronto in December 2004....
Dear Inner Circle member,


On occasion a client asks, “Should I invest in stocks in retirement?” The answer to the question depends on two sets of info:


First, start with the essential differences between stocks and bonds.


Over long periods, bonds tend to provide lower but more certain returns than stocks....
A: Aimia Inc., $9.26, symbol AIM on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 152.3 million; Market cap: $1.4 billion; www.aimia.com), is a recommendation of our Stock Pickers Digest newsletter.


The company owns and operates Aeroplan, Canada’s largest loyalty program....