amazon

Equal weight ETFs have struggled to gain popularity in both the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S. there are 115 equal-weighted funds. Their total assets under management is $45 billion, or just 1.1% of the total for ETFs.


The largest U.S. equal-weighted fund is the $12.3 billion Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weighted ETF (symbol RSP, see above)....

Microsoft has been one of the stock market’s shining stars during the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s mainly due to CEO Satya Nadella’s 2014 plan to expand the company’s cloud-computing operations. The move has helped it profit during the outbreak as more people work from home.


Looking beyond COVID-19, we feel the stock can move higher....

Slack Technologies provides firms with an application to help their teams of employees communicate through chat and direct messaging.


Meanwhile, even though the overall market is expanding rapidly, Slack faces significant competition. Its rivals include Microsoft Teams, Cisco Systems’ Webex Teams and Facebook’s Workplace.


That’s why its new partnership with Amazon.com is an important step toward gaining more and more market share against competitors.


SLACK TECHNOLOGIES INC....

Here’s the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients last month:

“We’ve generally stayed out of drug stocks for much of the past two decades, but that will change over the next year or two. In fact, we now expect to see many great investment opportunities in drug stocks throughout the 2020s....

“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”


—Friedrich Nietzsche


I first came across the concept of hormesis in Hiroshima, John Hersey’s book set in the aftermath of the 1945 atomic bomb blast on the Japanese city of that name....

A: The Trade Desk, Inc. $301.26, symbol TTD on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 40.9 million; Market cap: $13.8 billion; www.thetradedesk.com), operates a self-service, cloud-based digital-advertising platform where clients make their purchases across various formats and devices.

The Trade Desk is headquartered in Ventura, California, and has 1,200 employees in 23 offices across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

The company is a demand-side platform, which means that buyers of digital advertising are able to manage multiple ad and data accounts through one interface rather than having to open accounts with each supplier of digital content....

Amazon.com has now jumped to a new all-time high for our subscribers, including a 42% bounce from the bottom it reached during the recent downturn.


Investors now realize, more than ever, that the company’s dominance in e-commerce—through its aggressive retail strategies, massive distribution power and strong Prime program—will continue to build momentum in the wake of the coronavirus.


Furthermore, it continues to solidify its dominance in the cloud through its Amazon Web Services unit; its investment in Alexa virtual assistant AI technology further sets it up for a major role in the use of voice interfaces by individual consumers but also e-commerce retailers.


AMAZON.COM INC....

The United States has been the world’s leading economy for many decades.


Despite the rapid progression of the Chinese economy and challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we think U.S. companies will continue to offer ETF investors unparalleled opportunities.


VANGUARD U.S....

This month, we’re adding a new stock for subscribers of Canadian Wealth Advisor. As a key supermarket chain in Canada, Metro Inc. is building on its strong market position to supply consumers with food and drugs during the COVID-19 outbreak. This should steady its sales and profits in the difficult times ahead for the economy....

Investing in Canadian tech penny stocks can be very volatile. The top pennies will have these characteristics, but will still be very risky