amazon.com Inc.

The Direxion iBillionaire Index ETF, $21.51, symbol IBLN on New York (Units outstanding: 1.4 million; Market cap: $30.1 million; www.direxioninvestments.com), is designed to profit from copying the moves of billionaire investors such as Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, Daniel Loeb and David Tepper.

The ETF began trading on August 1, 2014. Its MER is 0.65%—lower than most mutual funds, but high for an ETF.

The Direxion iBillionaire Index ETF selects up to 10 billionaire investors from a pool of 50, based on their personal net worth, source of wealth, stock turnover and performance over time. It then selects stocks from their investment firms or hedge funds.

Each of the companies in the index is equally weighted (3.33% each) and rebalanced quarterly. That’s because the ETF’s managers aim to ensure that each stock’s contribution to the fund’s performance is identical.

The fund’s managers select stocks by looking at Form 13F, a publicly available document that institutions, such as banks, hedge funds and investment firms, must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Form 13F discloses long positions, or stocks held with the intention of profiting if their prices go up.

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POWERSHARES QQQ ETF $101.65 (Nasdaq symbol QQQ; buy or sell through brokers; www. invescopowershares.com), formerly called Nasdaq 100 Trust Shares, holds stocks representing the Nasdaq 100 Index, which consists of the 100 largest companies on the Nasdaq exchange by market cap. The Nasdaq 100 Index contains shares of companies in a number of major industries, including computer hardware and software, telecommunications, retail/wholesale trade and biotechnology. It does not contain financial firms. The fund’s MER is about 0.20%. It yields 1.4%. The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Apple, 10.9%; Alphabet Inc., 10.2%; Microsoft, 8.8%; Amazon.com, 5.4%; Facebook, 5.4%; Intel Corp., 2.9%; Comcast, 2.8%; Gilead Sciences, 2.5%; Cisco Systems, 2.4%; and Qualcomm, 1.3%....

SPDR S&P 500 ETF $191.30 (New York symbol SPY; buy or sell through brokers; www.spdrs.com) holds the stocks in the S&P 500 Index, which consists of 500 major U.S. companies chosen based on their market cap, liquidity and industry group. The fund’s MER is just 0.10%, and it yields 2.5%. The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Apple, 3.2%; Microsoft, 2.6%; Alphabet, 2.6%; Exxon- Mobil, 1.9%; Johnson & Johnson, 1.7%; General Electric, 1.6%; Facebook, 1.5%; Berkshire Hathaway, 1.4%; Wells Fargo & Co., 1.4%; Amazon.com, 1.3%; AT&T, 1.3%; Procter & Gamble, 1.3%; and JPMorgan Chase, 1.3%. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF is a top ETF pick for 2016.

We feel that investors will profit the most by holding a well-balanced portfolio of high-quality stocks. However, if you don’t want to build a portfolio, or you want to supplement your individual stock holdings, then ETFs can provide a great alternative. The main factors we use to evaluate ETFs are the stocks they hold, the diversification of their holdings across the five economic sectors and the fees (MERs) they charge. In general, investors holding mainly ETFs would want, say, 60% in Canadian ETFs and 20% to 30% in U.S. ETFs....

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are set up to mirror the performance of a stock market index or sub-index. They hold a more or less fixed selection of securities that represent the holdings that go into the calculation of the index or sub-index. ETFs trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. That’s different from mutual funds, which you can only buy at the end of the day at a price that reflects the fund’s value at the close of trading. Prices of ETFs are quoted in newspaper stock tables and online. You pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell them, but their low management fees give them a cost advantage over most mutual funds....

VANGUARD GROWTH ETF $110.65 (New York symbol VUG; buy or sell through brokers) aims to track the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) U.S. Large Cap Growth Index, a broadly diversified index that mainly consists of big U.S. companies. The fund’s MER is just 0.09%.

The $48.1-billion Vanguard Growth ETF’s top holdings are Apple, Alphabet, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Visa, Home Depot, Comcast, Amazon.com, Gilead Sciences and Walt Disney Co. The fund’s breakdown by industry is as follows: Technology, 23.9%; Consumer Services, 22.2%; Health Care, 13.7%; Financials, 12.5%; Industrials, 11.9%; Consumer Goods, 10.1%; Oil and Gas, 4.0%; Materials, 1.3%; and Telecom Services, 0.3%.

Vanguard Growth ETF is a buy.

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We recommend that investors diversify up to 30% of their portfolios into U.S. stocks and as much as 10% into international securities. One attractive way for safety-conscious investors to do this is with exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Today we look at several ETFs from a U.S. firm that offer a low-fee way to achieve this diversification. We profile two Vanguard ETFs that track a U.S. large-cap index and an emerging market index.

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment management companies. In all, it administers almost $3 trillion U.S. in 170 mutual funds.

Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S., because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces.

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: The shares of IBM are down, but its proven ability to adapt to new conditions makes it a value stock with strong growth potential

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment management companies. In all, it administers almost $3 trillion U.S. in 170 mutual funds. Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S., because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces. Canadians can, however, buy Vanguard exchange traded funds that trade on stock exchanges. We don’t recommend all of Vanguard’s ETFs, but here are two we do see as low-fee buys....

POWERSHARES QQQ ETF $105.63 (Nasdaq symbol QQQ; buy or sell throughbrokers ; www.invescopowershares.com), formerly called Nasdaq 100 Trust Shares, holds stocks representing the Nasdaq 100 Index, which consists of the 100 largest shares on the Nasdaq exchange by market cap.

The Nasdaq 100 Index contains shares of companies in a number of major industries, including computer hardware and software, telecommunications, retail/wholesale trade and biotechnology. It does not contain financial firms. The fund’s expenses are about 0.20% of its assets. It yields 1.0%.

The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Apple, Microsoft, Amgen, Google, Cisco Systems, Intel Corp., Amazon.com, Gilead Sciences, Comcast and Facebook.

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