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
EarthLink Holdings Corp., $8.16, symbol ELNK (Shares outstanding: 103.1 million; Market cap: $815.0 million; www.earthlink.net), is a provider of network, communications and Internet services to homes and businesses in the U.S. The company started up in 1994, during the dial-up Internet era, along with firms like AOL. It first sold shares at $13 and began trading on Nasdaq in 1997. EarthLink grew steadily, with innovative offerings including unlimited dial-up Internet access for $19.95 a month and competitively priced broadband Internet service over networks owned by Time Warner and AT&T....
Extendicare Inc., $7.76, symbol EXE on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 87.6 million; Market cap: $670.3 million; www.extendicare.com), owns and operates 57 long- and short-term senior-care facilities that can house 8,118 residents. It also manages a further 95 facilities that are home to 6,195 residents. About 73% of the company’s residents are in Ontario and 16% are in Alberta. The rest are in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Through its ParaMed Home Health Care division, Extendicare operates 47 branches in six provinces (Ontario, B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia). That total includes recently acquired Revera Home Health (see below). ParaMed’s 10,900 staff members provide nursing care, occupational, physical and speech therapy and assistance with daily activities to accommodate clients who live at home....
CVR Refining LP, $17.82, symbol CVRR on New York (Shares outstanding: 147.6 million; Market cap: $2.6 billion; www.cvrrefining.com), refines and markets fuels. The company operates a 115,000-barrel-a-day oil refinery in Kansas and another (70,000 barrels a day) in Oklahoma. CVR’s subsidiaries support these refineries with 540 kilometres of pipelines, more than 150 oil-transport trucks, a network of oil-gathering tanks and over six million barrels of owned and leased storage capacity. The company is majority owned and operated by CVR Energy, which itself is majority owned by activist investor Carl Icahn....
Hardwoods Distribution Inc., $16.99, symbol HWD on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 16.7 million; Market cap: $280.9 million; www.hardwoods-inc.com), is one of North America’s largest distributors of high-grade hardwood lumber and plywood. The company mainly purchases these products from hardwood lumber mills and sells them in the home construction, renovation and institutional markets. It operates through 33 distribution centres across Canada and the U.S. Hardwoods converted from an income trust to a conventional corporation in July 2011....
BMO US Dividend Hedged to CAD ETF, $17.36, symbol ZUD on Toronto (Units outstanding: 5.3 million; Market cap: $92.0 million; www.etfs.bmo.com), holds U.S. stocks that have maintained or increased their dividend rates over the last three years and meet other criteria, including yield and dividend payout ratio. The fund’s managers rebalance the underlying portfolio in June and December. Top holdings are Philip Morris International, ONEOK Inc., Garmin, Noble Corp., Verizon Communications, Mattel, Williams Cos., Gamestop, McDonald’s and Darden Restaurants. The ETF is hedged against movements of foreign currencies against the Canadian dollar. Its value rises and falls solely with the stocks in its portfolio, so it wouldn’t give you any diversification through foreign currency exposure....
Crius Energy Trust, $7.81, symbol KWH.UN on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 16.7 million; Market cap: $126.4 million; www.criusenergytrust.ca), owns 26.8% of Connecticut-based Crius Energy LLC. That company was formed when Regional Energy and Public Power merged in late 2012. Both of those firms started up in 2009 as energy retailers. Crius Energy LLC is one of the top energy retailers in the U.S., with about 800,000 customers. The company provides electricity and gas under variable and fixed-price supply contracts through a variety of sales channels. It operates through Viridian Energy, Cincinnati Bell Energy, FairPoint Energy, FTR Energy Services and Public Power....
Clarke Inc., $10.62, symbol CKI on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 15.6 million; Market cap: $164.1 million; www.clarkeinc.com), is a holding company with interests in products and services in the transportation, industrial, energy and consumer areas. It also invests in securities. Clarke continues to evolve from a trucking firm into an investment holding company. However, its strategy mainly involves investing in and turning around small, distressed firms, which adds risk. From time to time, it also buys hard assets: in February 2015 it sold its container vessel, the MV Shamrock for $4.6 million U.S. It made a small profit, but the purchase of the ship at a tax-lien auction in 2004 never paid off as expected....
Donald Trump, the front-runner among the many contenders for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, seems to scare some Canadian investors. Others see him as a harmless windbag who can be mildly amusing in small doses. But Trump also has many admirers. They recognize that he has made a lot of money for himself, and created a lot of jobs in the process. My view on Trump’s presidential chances is that after Obama, anything’s possible. President Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard law school in 1991. The following year, he took a job as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago, which he continued till 2004. He worked at a civil rights/community development law firm from 1993 through 2004. He also worked at a variety of community development organizations....
Shaw Communications, $26.76, symbol SJR.B on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 469.1 million; Market cap: $12.7 billion; www.shaw.ca), is one of Canada’s largest cable TV operators. The company has 1.9 million basic cable subscribers (mostly in Western Canada) and 851,569 satellite customers through its ownership of Shaw Direct. It also provides high-speed Internet to 1.9 million clients and telephone services to another 1.3 million. In September 2014, Shaw completed its $1.2-billion purchase of Colorado-based ViaWest, a privately held operator of data centres, cloud storage and information technology services. ViaWest has 27 data centres in the western United States....
Enghouse Systems, $51.84, symbol ESL on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 26.3 million; Market cap: $1.4 billion; www.enghouse.com), operates through two divisions. Interaction Management (which supplies 70% of total revenue) sells software for managing call centres, while the asset-management business (30% of revenue) provides engineering programs used by utilities, computer and telecommunications companies around the world. In the three months ended April 30, 2015, Enghouse’s revenue rose 25.0%, to $68.7 million from $55.0 million a year earlier, largely due to contributions from acquisitions....