A key rule of our three-part Successful Investor strategy is to spread your money out across most if not all of the five main economic sectors (Manufacturing & Industry; Resources & Commodities; Consumer; Finance; and Utilities).


This has two main benefits: a) It keeps you from investing too heavily in any industry or sector that is headed into a period of big losses; and b) by spreading your investments out more widely, it also improves your chances of latching onto a market superstar—a stock that will wind up producing two, five or 10 times more profit than average.


Here we discuss ETFs that represent two of the main equity sectors—Resources, and Utilities—while the section starting on page 43 looks at the remaining three sectors represented by three additional ETFs....

Broadridge is far from a household name, except in households with members who work in the investment business. Regardless, since its spinoff from Automatic Data Processing (symbol ADP on Nasdaq) in 2007, Broadridge has become a key provider of services to financial, brokerage and wealth management firms.

We added the stock as a buy in our February 2008 issue of Wall Street Stock Forecaster at $22 a share....

CCL INDUSTRIES INC., $69.15, symbol CCL.B on Toronto, mainly makes packaging products for the food, healthcare, automotive and personal-care industries. Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson are among its major customers. CCL also makes radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and banknotes.

The company has four main businesses:

• CCL (62% of total revenue) makes pressure-sensitive labels for plastic bottles and other forms of packaging....

TWILIO INC., $60.08, symbol TWLO on Nasdaq, is a buy. The company offers a key service to software developers who create mobile apps. Specifically, its own software is used to connect apps to essential functions elsewhere on a device, including dealing with phone calls and messaging.

Twilio has appointed a partner at activist investment firm Sachem Head Capital Management to its board of directors....

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA, $139.11, Toronto symbol RY, is a buy.

The bank last raised your quarterly dividend with the February 2024 payment. Investors now receive $1.38 a share, up 2.2% from $1.35. The new annual rate of $5.52 yields 4.0%.

Royal has now completed its $13.5-billion purchase of the Canadian operations of U.K.-based HSBC Holdings plc (New York symbol HSBC)....

CONAGRA BRANDS INC., $31.09, New York symbol CAG, is still a buy.

Through your shares, you tap the maker of some of North America’s most popular food brands. They include Chef Boyardee canned pasta, Hunt’s tomato sauce, Birds Eye frozen meals, Orville Redenbacher popcorn and Reddi-wip whipped cream.

The stock rose 5% this week after the company reported stronger-than-expected quarterly results....

CGI INC., $144.84, Toronto symbol GIB.A, is your #1 Aggressive Buy for 2024.

The company is Canada’s largest provider of computer outsourcing services. It helps its clients automate certain routine functions like accounting and buying supplies....

Index funds are mutual funds that invest so as to match market-index performance....

BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA, $67.98, is a buy. The lender, (Toronto symbol BNS; Shares outstanding: 1.2 billion; Market cap: $82.7 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 6.2%; www.scotiabank.com) due to current economic uncertainty and higher interest rates/inflation, set aside $962 million to cover future loan losses in its fiscal 2024 first quarter, ended January 31, 2024....

METRO INC., $71.12, is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol MRU; Shares outstanding: 227.0 million; Market cap: $16.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 1.9%; www.metro.ca) will close its produce distribution centre based in Ottawa in May....