Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of May 6, 2014?

Article Excerpt

Our Successful Investor portfolio strategy has three key points: Invest mainly in well-established companies; Spread your investments out across the five main economic sectors; Downplay or avoid stocks in the broker-media limelight. The first two rules in the strategy come natural to many investors. In contrast, many investors find the third rule is harder to accept—or easier to disregard. In fact, doing the reverse seems to come natural to a lot of investors. These investors seem to scour the broker media limelight for tips on stocks to buy. They feel that stocks in the limelight come with a special pedigree, almost a guarantee of top performance. Sooner or later, however, stocks in the broker/media limelight generally go through a period of drastic underperformance, if not outright collapse. Consider Barrick Gold. In the past couple of decades, Barrick was Canada’s favourite gold stock, judging by the amount of attention and favourable comment it received in the media and brokerage research. To its fans, everything the company did…