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
TORONTO-DOMINION BANK, $75.87, Toronto symbol TD, remains a buy for patient, income-seeking investors.

With the January 2025 payment, TD will raise your quarterly dividend by 2.9%. Investors will then receive $1.05 a share instead of $1.02....
MONDELEZ INTERNATIONAL INC., $61.93, Nasdaq symbol MDLZ, is a buy.

The company makes cookies and crackers (Oreo, Ritz), chocolate bars (Cadbury, Toblerone), candy (Clorets, Sour Patch Kids) and Halls cough drops.

This week, Mondelez announced a new plan to buy back up to $9 billion of its common shares by December 31, 2027....
SUNCOR ENERGY INC., $52.37, Toronto symbol SU, is a buy.

The company is Canada’s largest integrated oil firm, with major projects in the Alberta oil sands. It also operates four refineries (three in Canada and one in Colorado), along with over 1,800 Petro-Canada gas stations.

Suncor now expects to spend between $6.1 billion and $6.3 billion on exploration and upgrades in 2025....
A: TransAlta Corp., $18.29, symbol TA on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 298.4 million; Market cap: $5.5 billion; www.transalta.com), is one of Canada’s largest publicly traded power generators.

Established in 1911, the company develops and operates electricity generation facilities....
A: Integer Holdings Corp., $140.00, symbol ITGR on New York (Shares outstanding: 33.5 million; Market cap: $4.6 billion; www.integer.net), is among the world’s largest medical device outsource (MDO) manufacturing companies....
A: Brown-Forman Corp., $44.97, symbol BF.B on New York (Shares outstanding: 472.7 million; Market cap: $21.3 billion; www.brown-forman.com), makes and sells alcoholic beverages.

Based in Louisville Kentucky, the company was founded in 1870 with its first brand, Old Forester Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky....
I’ve been advising Canadian investors to include U.S. stocks in their portfolios for more than 30 years. I continue to recommend them today. The U.S. stock market offers the widest variety and highest investment grade of companies to invest in of any country in the world....
SCHNEIDER NATIONAL INC., $31.47, symbol SNDR on New York, is a Green Bay, Wisconsin-based transportation and logistics company. In business for 89 years, Schneider has three operating segments: Truckload (48% of revenue), Intermodal (24%), and Logistics (28%).

On November 24, 2024, the company announced its acquisition of Cowan Systems LLC for $390 million cash....
WAJAX CORP., $23.78, is a buy. Through their shares, investors benefit from the company’s (symbol WJX on Toronto) sales and servicing of cranes, forklifts and other heavy equipment. Wajax also provides related parts and systems such as ball bearings, hoses, diesel engines and transmissions.

The company’s customers are spread across the resources, construction, manufacturing and transportation industries.

In the quarter ended September 30, 2024, Wajax’s overall revenue fell 5.6%, to $481.0 million from $509.7 million a year earlier....
BANK OF MONTREAL, $146.32, Toronto symbol BMO, is still a buy.

With the February 2025 payment, the bank will raise your quarterly dividend by 2.6%, to $1.59 a share from $1.55. The new annual rate of $6.36 yields a high 4.3%. Bank of Montreal also announced a new plan to buy back up to 20 million of its common shares (2.7% of the total outstanding).

On February 1, 2023, the bank completed its acquisition of Bank of the West from France’s BNP Paribas for $13.8 billion U.S

Bank of the West provides a variety of retail and commercial banking services to over 1.8 million customers in 24 U.S....