JAPAN SMALLER CAP FUND $6.95 (New York symbol JOF; CWA Rating: Aggressive) mainly invests in less-widely followed Japanese over-the-counter stocks. The fund’s top holdings are: The Chiba Bank, Hitachi High-Technologies Corp., Moshi Moshi Hotline, Inc., Daibiru Corp., Fuyo General Lease Co. and Taiyo Yuden Co. The fund sells for a 13% discount to the value of its assets. Japan Smaller Cap Fund is a buy....

IVY GROWTH AND INCOME FUND $17.86 (CWA Rating: Conservative) (Mackenzie Financial Corp., 150 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3B5. 1-800-387-0780; Web site: www.mackenziefinancial.com. Load fund — available from brokers) is a balanced fund. As such, it holds a mix of stocks, bonds and cash. Ivy Growth and Income Fund has returned 2.9% annually for the 10 years ended April 30, 2009. Over the last year, the fund lost 16.6%. Its MER is 2.08%. The fund’s top stock holdings are: Thomson Reuters Corp., Shoppers Drug Mart, Imperial Oil, Tim Hortons, Bank of Nova Scotia, Becton Dickinson, Colgate-Palmolive, McDonald’s Corporation, Nestle SA and Reckitt Benckiser Group plc. The $1.8-billion Ivy Growth and Income Fund holds 25% of its assets in bonds. In Canada, interest rates on bonds are between 2% and 4% annually. That’s the total return that a bond can provide from today until the day it matures. However, bonds leave investors at the mercy of inflation, which shrinks the purchasing power of all fixed-return investments. In fact, an upsurge in inflation could wipe out all returns on bonds, as well as some of their principal....

IVY FOREIGN EQUITY FUND $25.26 (CWA Rating: Conservative) gained 2.1% over the past 10 years, which was better than 3.1% loss posted by the Morgan Stanley benchmark international index. Over the last year, Ivy Foreign Equity Fund lost 10.7%. The fund invests in companies based outside of Canada, but cuts its risk by avoiding direct investment in emerging markets. The $1.9-billion fund holds 52.8% of its assets in the U.S., 10.4% in France, 10.1% in Switzerland, 8.9% in the U.K., 3.2% in Sweden and 3.0% in Denmark. It holds 11% of its assets in cash. Ivy Foreign Equity is one of our top foreign-fund recommendations. Still, we think non-U.S. international funds should make up no more than 10% of a conservative investor’s portfolio....

IVY EUROPEAN FUND $11.87 (CWA Rating: Aggressive) holds mostly good-quality stocks. The fund has outperformed the longer-term benchmark Morgan Stanley index. Even so, we don’t see any reason to hold a mutual fund that focuses on Europe. If you want European exposure, consider the Ivy Foreign Equity Fund (see above), or the closed-end EUROPEAN EQUITY FUND $5.59. The European Equity Fund sells for a 16% discount on the current value of its assets. The fund is a buy. Ivy European Fund is a sell....

IVY CANADIAN FUND $20.80 (CWA Rating: Conservative) invests in high-quality, large-capitalization stocks. The $1.8-billion fund’s top holdings include: Thomson Reuters, Shoppers Drug Mart, Imperial Oil, Tim Hortons, Becton Dickinson & Co., McDonald’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Nestle SA, Bank of Nova Scotia and Reckitt Benckiser Group plc. Ivy Canadian’s breakdown by industry includes: consumer staples, 35.4%; consumer discretionary, 18.9%; energy, 9.2%; financials, 8.6%; health care, 6.2%; and industrials, 6.2%....

IVY ENTERPRISE FUND $3.73 invests in small-and medium-sized companies. The $108.5-million fund’s MER is 2.39%. The fund’s overall choice of stocks doesn’t inspire our confidence. Its top holdings are: Richie Brothers Auctioneers, National Instruments, CH Robinson Worldwide, Idexx Labs, Resources Connection, Astral Media, Daktronics, Henry Schein and Meridian Bioscience. The fund has lost 8.6% over the last year. We think investors can do better by buying some of the other small-cap funds we recommend in Canadian Wealth Advisor....

We’ve got four key Successful Investor investing for beginners tips that will help you profit from stock investing with less risk. No matter how widely or narrowly you cast your information net, some of your investments will disappoint you. But that won’t matter if you apply these three tips. That’s because your near-inevitable gains will overwhelm your all-but-unavoidable losses.

Successful Investor Investing for beginners Tip #1: Hold mostly high-quality, dividend paying stocks or mutual funds that hold those stocks

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We advise against a so-called “sector rotation” approach to investing; this is when you try to hop from sector to sector. We also advise against practicing a top-down sector rotation style; underweighting or overweighting sectors of the stock market depending on a forecast of the stage of the economic cycle, or other factors.

Few sector rotation strategies succeed over long periods, because they need to guess right twice. In other words, they have to pick the top sectors, and they need to pick the stocks to rise within those sectors. Consistently succeeding at both is extremely difficult.

There are many theories about which sectors will outperform at any given stage of the economic cycle. But trying to pick winning sectors — and staying out of other sectors — seldom works over long periods. Practitioners of sector rotation often wind up with heavy holdings in the worst-performing sectors. This can be devastating to your portfolio, even if you confine your investments to well-established companies.

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Rather than using sector rotation to try to beat the market, you should pick a good selection of stocks right from the outset. After you’ve decided what part of your savings to put in stocks, remember to spread it out across the five main economic sectors. This way, you avoid overloading yourself with stocks that are about to slump simply because of industry conditions or changes in investor opinion.

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Trading stocks online can look like a great way to build wealth. But it’s fraught with risks, and only really works when stock prices are rising steadily. Investors who see early success in a bull market can face devastating losses when markets retreat.

Today, you often see references to trading stocks online in the media, as if there’s something magical about entering buy and sell orders over the Internet, or making buy and sell decisions with the help of computer programs or Internet-based services.

You can, of course, cut your brokerage costs by trading stocks online through a discount broker. These brokers’ commissions tend to be lower than what you would pay by trading over the phone. However, if you are trading so much that this slight cut makes a material difference to your long-term returns, then your main problem is excessive trading, not high commissions.

Instead, we recommend that investors spend more time focusing on what they buy and how it fits in their portfolios. As their holding periods grow longer, chances are their profits will improve, as well. The Internet gives investors lots of information on publicly traded companies, including press releases, newspaper articles, company web sites and stock charts.

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Ottawa’s new Tax-Free Savings Accounts (or TFSAs) let you earn investment income — including interest, dividends and capital gains — tax free. A tax-free savings account can generally hold the same investments as an RRSP. This includes cash, mutual funds, publicly traded stocks, GICs and bonds. However, you are best to hold lower-risk investments in your TFSA. That’s because you don’t want to suffer big losses in your TFSA. If you do, you can’t use those losses to offset capital gains. You’ll also lose the main advantage of a TFSA: sheltering gains from tax. You won’t have gains to shelter if the value of your investments falls....