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
A: WSP Global Inc., $284.15, symbol WSP on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 130.5 million; Market cap: $37.3 billion; www.wsp.com), is a professional services consulting firm. It employs about 72,600 people, mainly engineers, technicians, scientists, environmental specialists, planners, and architects. The company is headquartered in Montreal and has over 531 offices in 50 countries.


WSP’s projects—both recently completed and ongoing—are varied. They include a two-million-square-foot Children’s hospital in Atlanta; a 1,325 megawatts offshore wind farm in Italy; a 12-storey shipping centre in Hong Kong; and National Bank’s new head office, a 40-storey office tower in downtown Montreal.
A: Kenvue Inc., $21.64, symbol KVUE on New York (Shares outstanding: 1.9 billion; Market cap: $41.6 billion; www.kenvue.com), is a consumer health company.


Kenvue is the former Consumer Health segment of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), which set it up as an independent company in November 2021. In May 2023, the new company then completed an initial public offering, with J&J selling its interest in the business.



Today, Kenvue’s portfolio of consumer health products includes Tylenol, Neutrogena, Listerine, Johnson’s, BAND-AID and other iconic brands. It also owns brands Aveeno, Zyrtec, and Nicorette. Together, those products resulted in sales of $15.46 billion for 2024.
A: US Critical Metals Corp., $0.38, symbol USCM on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) (Shares outstanding: 30.3 million; Market cap: $11.4 million; www.uscmcorp.com), is focused on mining projects in the U.S.


Through joint ventures with public and private-sector partners, the company has a stake in several rare-earth mining projects—all exploratory or in early stages of development.
A: Kinross Gold Corp., $25.17, symbol K on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 1.2 billion; Market cap: $30.5 billion; www.kinross.com), is a senior gold mining company with a diverse portfolio of mines and projects.


In the U.S., the company operates mines in Nevada (Round Mountain and Bald Mountain) and in Alaska (Fort Knox as well as the Manh Choh development project). In Canada, it owns the Great Bear development project in Red Lake, Ontario, while in Brazil, Kinross operates Paracatur, a mine in the Minas Gerais region. Also in South America, it operates the La Coipa mine in the Atacama region of Chile, along with the large Lobo-Marte development project. In Africa, the company’s Tasiast mine in Mauritania benefits from expanding production.
A: We continue to like the outlook for one of our TSI Stocks of the Year for 2025, FirstService Corp., $270.32, symbol FSV on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 45.4 million; Market cap: $12.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.firstservice.com). The company offers management services to condominium corporations and a growing list of niche services to individual homeowners (see below).


FirstService boosted its earnings 27% in the most-recent quarter through its well-managed acquisition of several small firms. Those businesses depend on recurring business from existing homeowners and are less vulnerable to the ups and downs of new home sales. They also immediately added to the company’s overall revenue and earnings.
We have seen a nice increase in questions from our Inner Circle members over the last quarter or so. (Just below is a prime example.) Your emails have kept us busy, and they offer insights into what investment issues have seized your attention. Keep the emails coming!