With another month of market turmoil coming to an end I thought I would take a few moments to give readers a look into what I've been up to in the month of November with my two portfolios.

Yield, yield and more yield was one major theme for the month as stock prices came down even further than I expected them to after a horrible September and disastrous October in equity markets. What's become immediately apparent to me while watching the markets the past few months has been the glaring distance of spreads between the bid & ask prices for equities. Investors looking for immediate liquidity have been more than happy to unload their shares at very attractive valuations for the long-term investor. Opportunities have been surprisingly swift; especially in the preferred share market with valuations of highly regarded issues yielding at times well above historical spreads. While an income investor won't want to overload their portfolio with preferred shares these equities provide a meaningful source of additional income to help fuel further purchases of common equities and are highly tax efficient.

Stocks Bought:

DivG:

Newalta Income Fund (NAL.UN): Management recently announced their intention to convert back to a dividend paying corporation with a targeted annual payout of $0.80 per share. The moneygardener had brought this to my intention earlier in the month and after further review of the company I determined that their operations and prospects for growth in waste management services was a solid long-term opportunity from a risk/reward standpoint. Their market remains highly fragmented with relatively smaller competitors and the company is diversified adequately from its oil & gas operations with landfill and alternative revenues. While I expect continued volatility in this stock over the short-term I expect this company to conservatively grow its portfolio of services and operations and raise its dividend in the future.

Canadian Pacific (CP) & Canadian National Railway (CNR): After getting on the Dividend Express in October I again added to my position in CP and further lowered my ACB in CNR at $42. While both are economically sensitive the price of energy has decreased recently adding to their profitability.