What is Pat’s commentary for the week of June 21, 2016

Article Excerpt

On the whole, investors have underestimated Canada’s top bank stocks for as long as I’ve been in the investment business. As a result, these stocks have often traded at attractive share prices. Because they were growing, and cheaper in many respects than other stocks, they gave conservative Canadian investors a near-ideal combination of pluses: above-average dividend yields and records; low-to-moderate ratios of per share price-to-earnings; and above-average long-term capital gains. That’s why I’ve continually recommended buying Canada’s top five bank stocks since the 1970s. It’s also why that advice has paid off so nicely. Of course, the banks have gone through periodic and sometimes lengthy slumps, like any other stock group. They occasionally make costly management errors. On rare occasions, they have suffered from adverse regulatory decisions. But because they have grown and have generally been available at highly attractive prices, they’ve provided well-above average investment returns for decades. That performance is likely to continue in the coming decades as well, in…