Investing

I'd like to help you earn more in 2015. The beginning of the new year is the perfect time to set goals, and begin on the path to increase your passive income.

My approach to value investing is simple, build yourself a stream of passive income that increases every year. You can do this by buying quality stocks, and collecting their dividends (cash paid to the shareholders).

The income is passive, because after you've bought the stock there is no more effort on your part. You receive regular div…

Should you buy growth stocks or avoid them? George Athanassakos (Professor of Finance at University of Western Ontario), discussed growth stocks recently in the Globe and Mail (August 26, 2014). Before I share with you the information from the article, it's important to understand the P/E Ratio.

I’m going to keep this simple, let’s begin with the only two definitions you will need for today:  

Price: this is the stock price  

Earnings: this is earnings per share; earnings are the amount of pr…

Are you worried about falling stock prices? If you’re thinking about investing, then falling stock prices are great!

The key is to buy quality stocks when they are undervalued. The return on your investment (dividend yield) will also be higher when stock prices are low. Let’s take a look at a real-life example:

ConocoPhillips was founded in 1917, and is an American company which explores for, develops, and produces crude oil, bitumen, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, and natural gas liquids…

Show me an anxious, impatient, irrational person, and I’ll show you a lousy investor. Your emotions are key when it comes to investing. Successful investors don’t let their emotions get in the way.

You’ve probably heard of Warren Buffett, he’s a famous value investor and a self-made billionaire with a successful track record of over 50 years. But what you may not know is that most of what Warren Buffet learned came from Ben Graham. Ben Graham was Warren Buffett’s teacher and mentor at Columbia …

Today I'd like to share with you some wisdom from someone who has been a dividend investor for more than 30 years.

In the latest edition of the Connolly Report (August 2014), Tom Connolly had this to say about investing:

"Focus on the growing dividend income, the increasing yields, is my message to you, in a sentence, after researching dividend income common stocks for thirty years. Dividends give stock intrinsic value. Dividend increases build wealth. In 1993, for instance, Royal Bank’s divid…

Besides dividends, there’s another way to grow your portfolio. Stock buy backs. A stock buyback is when a company buys back some of its own shares.

A buyback doesn’t mean a company will come knocking on your door to buy your shares, it simply means a company will place orders on the stock market and over a period of time buy back some of its own shares from other investors.

What does a share buyback mean for you? A share buyback reduces the amount of outstanding shares on the market. Reduced s…

Do you have poor performing investments (stocks, mutual funds, index funds, ETFs)? If so, now might be the time to get rid of them.

Recently the Dow broke through 17,000 for the first time. The stock market reached an all time high. When the markets are high, that is usually a good time to get rid of your loser investments.

Loser investments are investments that:

•    Have been performing poorly over the years
•    Have reduced or eliminated their dividends over the last few years
•    Mutual…

Are you trying to beat the market? Do you think if you spent large amounts of time researching stocks that you can can achieve extraordinary returns?

Very few people can consistently outperform the stock market. The chances are extremely slim that you can compete with experts who have the latest data and research at their finger tips. The goal here is to build yourself a portfolio of safe quality dividend-paying stocks.

Over time your portfolio will start generating increasing passive income f…

Building a portfolio is a marathon not a sprint. I know many of you are eager to invest right away and invest everything, so that you can achieve maximum returns. But remember you must buy quality stocks  when they are undervalued.

Buy low and sell high, not the other way around. I'm a big fan of Investment Quality Trends (IQT), and I'd like to share with you the latest nugget of wisdom from IQT:

"As long as the Federal Reserve maintains a zero interest rate policy there is no alternative for …

Re-investing dividends will grow your savings much faster than if you spent your dividends. But how much faster will your savings grow? John Heinzl wrote an article recently at GlobeAdvisor.com looking at a fictional portfolio for Harry and Sally.

"Consider two investors, whom we'll call Harry and Sally (my age is showing, I know). On Dec. 31, 1993, each invests $10,000 in shares of Royal Bank of Canada. They hold their shares for the next 20 years, the only difference being that Harry spends h…