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: Hamilton Enhanced Canadian Bank ETF, $21.04, symbol HCAL on Toronto (Units outstanding: 25.3 million; Market cap: $532.3 million; hamiltonetfs.com), aims to track the Solactive Canadian Bank Mean Reversion Index.

This index invests in the biggest six Canadian banks—Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Royal Bank, TD and National Bank....
As long-time readers know, we welcomed the arrival of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) when they came on the market as “the most benign stock market innovation we’ve seen since stock commissions became negotiable.”

However, the financial industry often figures out a way to offer investors attractive terms on a newly minted version of an innovation, just to get their interest....
BUILDERS FIRSTSOURCE INC., $195.49, symbol BLDR on NYSE, is the largest U.S. supplier of building products, prefabricated components, and value-added services to the professional market segment for new residential construction and repair and remodeling.

The company makes products such as roof and floor trusses, wall panels, stairs, vinyl windows, custom millwork, and pre-hung doors....
ALTAGAS LTD., $29.30, is still a buy. The company (symbol ALA on Toronto) processes, transports, stores and markets natural gas for producers. It also operates natural gas utilities and is a power generator, with gas-fired, coal-fired, wind, biomass and hydroelectric plants.

Almost all of AltaGas’ assets are now in the U.S....
TC ENERGY INC., $54.49, Toronto symbol TRP, remains a buy.

TC generates steady cash flow for investors mainly through a 93,700-kilometre pipeline network that pumps natural gas from Alberta to eastern Canada and the U.S. Its other operations include 4,900 kilometres of crude oil pipelines and nine power plants.

With the April 2024 payment, TC will raise your quarterly dividend by 3.2%....
ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND CO., $59.31, New York symbol ADM, is still a hold.

The company processes corn, wheat, soybeans, flax seed and other crops into a variety of food ingredients such as flour, oils and sweeteners. It’s also a leading producer of ethanol from corn, a gasoline additive that reduces harmful emissions.

Archer recently suspended its chief financial officer in response to concerns about the accounting practices at its nutrition division....
THOMSON REUTERS CORP., $213.15, Toronto symbol TRI, is a buy.

The company now focuses on selling specialized information and software to the legal, tax and accounting fields. That follows the sale of 55% of its Refinitiv financial information business to Blackstone Group LP (New York symbol BX) on October 1, 2018, for $17 billion (all amounts except share price in U.S....

You Can See Our Current Power Recommendations For April 2024 Here.


Understanding our recommendations: Power Buy—These stocks are our top choices for new buying now....

You Can See Our Spinoff Stock Portfolio For April 2024 Here.


Why we like spinoffs so much
We think that spinoffs are the closest thing you can find to a sure thing for two main reasons:


1) The management of a parent company will only hand out shares in a subsidiary to its own investors if it’s all but certain that business, and the parent, will be better off after the spinoff.


2) Spinoffs involve a lot of work and legal fees....
A: The Cooper Companies Inc., $101.41, symbol COO on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 198.8 million; Market cap: $20.1 billion; www.coopercos.com), is a California-based healthcare business with two operating segments.

The first segment is Cooper Vision (75% of revenues); it manufactures and markets soft contact lenses for the vision-correction market worldwide....