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
Investment and consumer companies both work hard on their marketing, because it can attract customers and spur sales. But marketing can do a lot more damage with investments than with dish soaps, since it can make an inherently risky investment look safe.
Consider “hedge fund investing”....
Consider “hedge fund investing”....
Capital Power Corp., $18.02, symbol CPX on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 99.7 million; Market cap: $1.8 billion; www.capitalpower.com), is one of Canada’s largest independent power producers, with interests in 3,500 megawatts of generation capacity.
In 2013, the company sold its New England power plants to Emera for $541 million U.S....
In 2013, the company sold its New England power plants to Emera for $541 million U.S....
Vermilion Energy, $37.56, symbol VET on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 110.8 million; Market cap: $4.2 billion; www.vermilionenergy.com), produces oil and gas in Western Canada, Europe and Australia. It also holds an 18.5% interest in Ireland’s Corrib gas field....
Clearwater Seafoods, $11.73, symbol CLR on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 55.0 million; Market cap: $645.2 million; www.clearwater.ca), is one of North America’s largest seafood companies and Canada’s biggest holder of shellfish licences and quotas....
Milestone Apartments REIT, $15.04, symbol MST.UN on Toronto (Units outstanding: 60.4 million; Market cap: $899.5 million; www.milestonereit.com), owns 61 “garden-style” apartment properties containing 19,908 units in 14 cities throughout the U.S. Southeast and Southwest.
The real estate investment trust continues to grow by acquisition....
The real estate investment trust continues to grow by acquisition....
The Chou Associates Fund invests in U.S and foreign stocks, with the aim of holding a limited number of what it sees as undervalued companies. At latest report (September 30, 2015), the fund owned 14 stocks, making up 58.2% of its portfolio. Only nine of these stocks made up more than 2% of its portfolio....
This will be our last Inner Circle Q&A for 2015. Our next issue will go out on Tuesday, January 5, 2016.
Now is a good time for me to say “Thanks!” to all our Inner Circle members. It’s a pleasure to read and answer your questions. I take great pleasure and pride from the many compliments and expressions of gratitude you send every week.
That’s especially true when I hear from a member who I recognize from decades ago—from the early days after the 1994 launch of The Successful Investor, or from the two prior decades that I spent at The Investment Reporter and MPL Communications.
It’s also great to see that our Successful Investor philosophy and practice have begun attracting more and more younger investors.
I wish you all a great year-end holiday and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!
...
Now is a good time for me to say “Thanks!” to all our Inner Circle members. It’s a pleasure to read and answer your questions. I take great pleasure and pride from the many compliments and expressions of gratitude you send every week.
That’s especially true when I hear from a member who I recognize from decades ago—from the early days after the 1994 launch of The Successful Investor, or from the two prior decades that I spent at The Investment Reporter and MPL Communications.
It’s also great to see that our Successful Investor philosophy and practice have begun attracting more and more younger investors.
I wish you all a great year-end holiday and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!
...
Trimac Transportation, $5.70, symbol TMA on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 28.2 million; Market cap: $155.7 million, www.trimac.com), is a trucking company that operates across Canada. Trimac has more than 500 customers and ships products like chemicals, petroleum, cement, wood and wood products, resources, food and compressed and liquefied gases. In the three months ended September 30, 2015, the company’s revenue fell 6.2%, to $95.2 million from $101.7 million a year earlier. That’s mainly because low oil and gas prices have hurt the Western Canadian economy....
NexGen Energy, $0.67, symbol NXE on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 221.4 million; Market cap: $167.8 million, www.nexgenenergy.ca), continues to drill at its 100%-owned Rook I uranium property in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin. The company has reported positive results at the property’s Arrow zone, which it discovered in February 2014. In March 2015, NexGen discovered a new mineralized area, called Bow, 3.7 kilometres northeast of Arrow. Recent drilling at the Arrow zone included hole AR-15-57c3, which returned 5.0 metres of a very high 49.60% uranium oxide....
Decades ago, it used to make some sense to try to profit by moving back and forth between bonds and stocks. That’s because bonds and stocks had something of a seesaw relationship.
When the economy was strong, business profits and stock prices would go up. However, interest rates and inflation would go up as well. The rise in interest rates meant that new bonds would come on the market with higher interest rates. That would push down prices of existing bonds that carried low interest rates.
As this process continued, some investors would sell some of their stocks, in part because stock prices had gone up. They would re-invest the money in bonds, because bond prices had fallen, and bond yields had gone up. This trading strategy gave investors a sense of safety and accomplishment, but it had drawbacks.
For one, you had to pay taxes in gains on your stocks if you held them in taxable accounts. You also had to pay brokerage commissions on the stock sales, and absorb the costs of buying bonds. (Bond trading costs were often built in to the price of bonds, rather than being charged separately as they are with stocks.) In addition, timing was crucial.
The appeal of selling stocks that had gone up, and buying bonds that had become cheaper, only goes so far. It shrinks quickly if your stocks keep going up after you sell, and your bonds keep going down after you buy.
...
When the economy was strong, business profits and stock prices would go up. However, interest rates and inflation would go up as well. The rise in interest rates meant that new bonds would come on the market with higher interest rates. That would push down prices of existing bonds that carried low interest rates.
As this process continued, some investors would sell some of their stocks, in part because stock prices had gone up. They would re-invest the money in bonds, because bond prices had fallen, and bond yields had gone up. This trading strategy gave investors a sense of safety and accomplishment, but it had drawbacks.
For one, you had to pay taxes in gains on your stocks if you held them in taxable accounts. You also had to pay brokerage commissions on the stock sales, and absorb the costs of buying bonds. (Bond trading costs were often built in to the price of bonds, rather than being charged separately as they are with stocks.) In addition, timing was crucial.
The appeal of selling stocks that had gone up, and buying bonds that had become cheaper, only goes so far. It shrinks quickly if your stocks keep going up after you sell, and your bonds keep going down after you buy.
...