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XPO LOGISTICS $95 (New York symbol XPO; Manufacturing sector; Shares outstanding: 119.6 million; Market cap: $11.4 billion; Takeover Target Rating: Highest; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.xpo. com) is a major global provider of supply-chain services.

The company operates two business segments: The Logistics division (35% of sales) provides contract, warehousing, distribution, and inventory management....

Here are two recent ETF launches that offer Canadian investors exposure to rapidly expanding niche markets. We also take a look at a well-established, broad-based fund. It offers the same kind of global reach as those new, more narrowly focused ETFs. However, its risk is lower....

WYNDHAM WORLDWIDE CORP. $112 (New York symbol WYN; Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 101.2 million; Market cap: $11.3 billion; Takeover Target Rating: Medium; Dividend yield: 2.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.wyndhamworldwide.com) plans to spin off its hotel business as Wyndham Hotel Group....

eBay spun off its transaction-processing business in July 2015. The PayPal spinoff was partly due to pressure from prominent activist investor Carl Icahn, who saw it as a way to unlock value for shareholders.

Since the spinoff, eBay shares are up 30%....

Dear Inner Circle member,

Here’s the text of the most-recent letter I sent to our Portfolio Management clients in late October:

“Emergency government measures can have unpleasant, unforeseeable side effects for the economy and investors. But you need a long-term perspective to see the link between cause and effect.

The 2008/2009 financial crisis was the world’s worst financial upset since the 1930s....

Its online and mobile commerce make Alibaba Group Holding the largest company of its kind in the world, but its vast potential comes with risks.

HEWLETT-PACKARD ENTERPRISE CO. $13 (New York symbol HPE; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares o/s: 1.6 billion; Market cap: $20.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.4; Dividend yield: 2.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.hpe.com) sells computing services and products, such as servers and analytics software, to businesses and governments.

The company recently merged most of its software operations with U.K.-based Micro Focus International plc....

ISHARES S&P/TSX 60 INDEX ETF $24 (Toronto symbol XIU; TSINetwork ETF Rating: Conservative Market cap: $10.8 billion) is a low-fee way to buy the top Canadian listed stocks. Specifically, the ETF holds stocks that represent the S&P/TSX 60 Index—the largest, most heavily traded equities on the TSX.

The ETF’s top holdings are Royal Bank, 8.7%; TD Bank, 8.0%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 5.9%; Enbridge, 5.3%; CN Railway, 4.8%; Suncor Energy, 4.5%; Bank of Montreal, 3.8%; TransCanada Corp., 3.3%; BCE, 3.3%; Manulife Financial, 3.1%, Canadian Natural Resources, 3.0%; CIBC, 3.0%; Brookfield Asset Management, 2.8% and Canadian Pacific Railway, 1.9%.

The industry breakdown is as follows: Financials (41%), Resources (29%), Industrials (9%), Telecommuncations (6%), Consumer discretionary (5%), Consumer staples (4%), Information technology (2%), Utilities (2%) and others (2%).

Still, this ETF’s assets are highly concentrated in the financial and resources sectors.

The fund began trading in September 1999....

Born between 1980 and 2000, about 90 million residents in the U.S. belong to Generation Y. The oldest of those “millennials"—a name coined for members of this large demographic group—will reach their prime earning years starting in 2020. Over the next two to three decades, millennials as a group will also inherit from their baby-boomer parents the single-largest transfer of wealth from one generation to the next....

A: Alibaba Group Holding (ADR), $188.28, symbol BABA on New York (ADRs outstanding: 2.6 billion; Market cap: $480.1 billion, www.alibaba.com), raised a total of $25 billion in late 2014 with its IPO, or Initial Public Offering....