Recent Buy: CLF, BNS and RY

Buy Low and Sell High is a great investment tenet. One of the biggest dilemmas with this investment doctrine, is when markets are down, it doesn’t always mean you have the funds to invest. Case in point, in May 2012 the TSX hit its 52 week lows. Although I have no way to know where market tops or bottoms are, I would love to have bought into some great stocks at that time. If I am already fully invested, and don’t have any investment capital, then it really makes no difference whether markets are down or up. While I don’t …

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Recent Buy: Bank of Montreal (BMO)

The markets continued their decline this week, with the TSX breaking below the psychological 12,000 level. Although the losing streak appeared to take a turn upwards on Wednesday morning, many investors are still remaining on the sidelines.   Whether the markets will continue to decline in another sell-off, or continue on another Bull Run is anyone’s guess. When markets dip, it’s an opportune time to buy shares of companies on your watch list, or top-up current holdings. Having sold my index equity funds back in early March, I was delighted when markets began their decline this April. It presented an opportunity …

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TD Lowers Trading Fees

In the competetive business of online trading, TD Waterhouse has always had expensive trading fees at $29.00 per trade. But unlike Scotia iTrade, there are no hidden fees or inactivity fees. As long as you sign up for e-services then your accounts have no admin fees (other than RRSP’s under $25K). As well TD provides an excellent trading platfrom with excellent research tools. On November 4th TD Waterhouse announced that their $9.99 trade fee, which was only available to investors with over 100K in assets, is now available to investors with over 50K in assets. This is a welcome move …

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Are Canadian Banks Overvalued?

It seems these days that caution has been thrown to the wind, and investors have been looking for higher yields and even better returns on investment.  With blue chip stocks paying dividend yields higher than government bonds and some corporate bonds, it’s no wonder dividend stocks are the flavour of the month.  A lot of attention has been centered on the Canadian Banks lately, and with yields of 3.5% to 4.7%, these stocks are looking attractive to investors.  But with three of the six big banks trading near their 52 week highs, and all six trading at or near 2007 …

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