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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The Bakken, which covers parts of Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan, could contain more than 500 billion barrels of oil.
Oil was first discovered in the Bakken region in 1951, but it has always been hard to extract from the shale rock....
The long-term outlook for gas remains positive, but prices could move sideways, or even downward, in the short term. The best way to profit with less risk is to invest in companies that are steadily increasing their production and cash flows.
Here are two producers with strong growth prospects and attractive dividend yields.
ARC RESOURCES $32.52 (Toronto symbol ARX; Shares outstanding: 314.9 million; Market cap: $10.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative; Dividend yield: 3.7%; www.arcresources.com) produces oil and natural gas in Western Canada....
Loblaw paid $12.4 billion, consisting of $6.6 billion in cash and $5.8 billion in shares....
The new company, called PrairieSky Royalty, will hold the oil and gas rights to 5.2 million acres....
The bank bought ING Direct from its Netherlands-based parent, ING Group, in November 2012....
The fund’s top holdings include Commonwealth Bank of Australia, 11.1%; BHP Billiton, 10.5%; Westpac Banking Corp., 9.6%; Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, 8.3%; National Australia Bank, 7.3%; Wesfarmers, 4.3%; Woolworths, 4.2%; CSL Ltd., 2.9%; Rio Tinto, 2.3%; Woodside Petroleum, 2.3%; Telstra Group, 1.9%, Westfield Group, 1.9%; and Macquarie Group, 1.4%.
Australia benefits from its stable banking and political systems....
Algonquin bought four companies in 2012, and seven more in 2013....