What I Have Been Doing

Today I am going to talk about three stocks, Pembina Pipelines (TSX-PIF.UN), Metro Inc (TSX-MRU.A) and TD Bank (TSX-TD). I have been doing some buying and some selling.

First, I will talk about what I sold. I sold ½ of the shares of Metro Inc. I did this because this stock got to be 10% of my portfolio. I do not like any one stock to be such a high percentage of my portfolio. I do not think that Metro is a bad stock. I only sold ½ of what I owned. It got to be such a larger percentage of my portfolio because of two things. First, this stock is now worth double what I paid for it. Second, Metro has been rising since March 2008. Since my portfolio is down a lot because of this recent bear market, this stock is worth a higher percentage of my portfolio.

I have looked at analyst recommendations on this stock. There are still Buys recommendations on this stock, but there a growing number of Holds and even some Underperform or Reduce calls on this stock. All the usual indicators are good on this stock. It has good growth in Revenue, Earnings, Book Value and Cash Flow. The only negative is that the current stock price is some 15% above the Graham Price.

What I replaced Metro with was TD Bank. As with all other Canadian Banks, this bank has been beaten up recently. The current yield at over 5% is above historical highs. The stock price is still below the Graham price by some 30%. This stock has good growth in Earnings, Book Value and Dividends. The growth in Revenues is not bad either. The percentage of my portfolio in financials has fallen recently. All financials have been hard hit by this current bear market. This will rebalance by portfolio for the sectors in which I invest. When the financials recover, I will probably have too much in this sector and will probably sell this stock or the stock of some other bank I hold.

The last stock to talk about is Pembina Pipelines. This is a unit trust stock and as such will be affected by the recent change in law for unit trust stock. This company will be changing to a corporation. However, they have stated that they plan to keep the current distribution of $1.56 per share for the next 5 years. This is, of course, no guarantee that this will happen, but we do know what they intend to do. I had some spare money to invest, so I invested some in this company. This company has had good growth in Revenues, Earnings and Cash Flow. It has not done badly in increasing the dividends in the past.

Currently the dividend is at an 11% yield and this is good compared to past yields. There has also been a lot of insider buying on this stock recently. However, all the estimates for this stock have been lowered since I last looked at this stock on March 6, 2009. Also, the stock recommendation has also moved to having majority at hold and some at reduced. So, according to these recommendations, I am taking a risk in investing at this time in this stock.

See my spreadsheets for these stocks at Pembina,
Metro and TD Bank.

This blog is meant for educational purposes only, and is not to provide investment advice. Before making any investment decision, you should always do your own research or consult an investment professional. See my website at www.spbrunner.com/stocks.html for a list of the stocks for which I have put up spreadsheets.