You may find that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have a place in your portfolio. Unlike many other financial innovations, they don’t load you up with heavy management fees or tie you down with high redemption charges if you decide to withdraw. Instead, they give you a low-cost, flexible, convenient alternative to mutual funds.

They have another advantage. Since shares are only added or removed when the underlying index changes, there’s a low turnover. That means you aren’t faced with the capital gains bills generated by the yearly distributions most mutual …read more »

One of the questions we get asked most often is how we’ve managed to recommend so many stocks over the years that get taken over.

Almost invariably, we come back to one key point. We aim to recommend stocks with hidden assets—assets that attract less investor attention than they deserve.

Hidden assets give investors a bargain. They also attract takeover bids.

Stock investment advice: These shares soared more than 100% with the takeover bid

Hidden assets played a key role in our recommendation of Gennum Corp. (Toronto symbol GND; www.gennum.com).

Gennum designs electronic …read more »

The Week in Review lets you easily catch up on any Daily Updates you may have missed during the week. This is your opportunity to review the reports and analysis that may have the greatest impact on your investments.

This Week’s Reports

Stock market advice: Just one of these three investor mentalities is a plus

Tech stocks: Google’s push into social networking adds to its search engine dominance

Investor Toolkit: The best way to buy a home as a real estate investment

Stock trading advice: When to sell a weak stock

Commodity stocks: Two juniors with …read more »

Pat McKeough responds to many personal questions on specific stocks and other investing topics from the members of his Inner Circle. Every week, his comments and recommendations on a selection of the most intriguing questions of the past week go out to all Inner Circle members. And every Friday, we offer you one of the highlights from these Q&A sessions.

This week, two junior commodity stocks were the subject of a question from one of our Inner Circle members: one is a drilling company with interests in North America, Panama and …read more »

Our investing strategy is a conservative one. We consistently recommend taking the long, rather than the short, view. But clearly not all stocks can be held indefinitely. A good portfolio is never a completely static one.

Bringing in good stocks will obviously invigorate your portfolio. It is equally true that some stocks that fail to perform just aren’t worth holding on to. That leads many investors to ask us just when they should let go of a weak stock and replace it with something new.

Our stock trading advice begins with …read more »

Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific advice on successful investing, including real estate investments. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental tip and shows you how you can put it into practice right away.

Tip of the week: “Buy a house that suits your needs, and let the potential real estate investment profits take care of themselves.”

For most of us, a house is the biggest investment and consumer …read more »