Stocks 101

I've been investigating the stock market and financial issues for the past while, and have made some decisions about investing, but before I fully test the waters I decided to check my resolve a bit. A number of commentators in the blogsphere have been promoting Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) as the way match (or beat) the market. These index funds are one way to have someone else manage your money for you. However, ever the contrarian, I wrote a reply on Canadian Capitalist's Blog challenging the easy way out.
I've been following the practices espoused by a number of value investors, such as Francis Chou, Tim Burt, and Phillips, Hager & North, and have determined that I accept that philosophy and look to high quality dividend-paying stocks.
As such, I've created my own benchmark of stocks and will follow them into the future. My premise is that there are many great companies with which we are quite familiar and will provide a steady, quality return. Using Yahoo Finance I have modeled a portfolio by "purchasing" approximately $4000 of each of the following common shares on July 1:

• Fortis, my electrical supplier
  
• telus, my phone company
  
• CN Rail, because of the whistles that wake me at night
  
• Royal Bank, my financial institution
  
• Tim Horton's, 'cause a day without coffee.......
  
• Teck Cominco, the smelter just over the mountain from here
  
• Shaw Cable, our entertainment provider
  

On July 6, the portfolio looked like this:

and had already increased in value by 2.5% in the week since created. I'll be updating this portfolio on a monthly basis, so stop back to see how my model performs, and learn if I'm kicking myself for not actually making the investment!