amazon

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....

AMAZON.COM INC., $437.71, symbol AMZN on Nasdaq, plans to set up cloud data centres in India by next year. Amazon Web Services already has what it says are “tens of thousands” of customers in India using its cloud services at one of its 11 data centres worldwide. However, Indian customers are looking for lower latency—delays between computer input and output unnoticeable by humans but key for real-time processing in Internet services such as online trading, gaming and voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology....

AMAZON.COM $488.27 (Nasdaq symbol AMZN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk)(206-266-1000; www.amazon.com; Shares outstanding: 465.7 million; Market cap: $227.3 billion; No dividends paid) continues to excel in a range of businesses; its shares are now at all-time highs.

The company is a major online retailer that’s growing quickly in new areas. For example, Amazon Web Services offers cloud services through 11 data centres worldwide. It accounts for just 7% of Amazon’s sales, but that’s growing at over 50% a year. However, when Amazon enters a new line of business, it’s happy to make little profit, or even lose money.

This is an appropriate growth strategy. Eventually, competitors will catch up with its technology and business practices. In the meantime, it focuses on building a large and loyal clientele.

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Rackspace Hosting Inc., $37.19, symbol RAX on New York (Shares outstanding: 142.8 million; Market cap: $5.4 billion; www.rackspace.com), provides cloud computing and information technology services for a range of businesses. Its offerings include web hosting and tools clients use to manage their data centres, networks and devices. The company gets about two-thirds of its revenue from managed cloud-hosting services, which combine cloud space with specialized client support. This approach appeals to businesses that want to outsource their computing needs so they can focus on their main operations. The remaining third comes from unmanaged (or public) cloud services. In the three months ended March 31, 2015, Rackspace’s revenue rose 14.1%, to $480.2 million from $421.0 million a year earlier. The rise came from an influx of new customers and higher sales to existing ones. The company gets about 30% of its revenue from outside of the U.S., and the higher U.S. dollar cut its sales by $11 million in the latest quarter....

MONSANTO CO., $105.21, New York symbol MON, develops and sells technology-based agricultural products, such as genetically modified seeds, to farmers, grain processors and food companies. It also sells weed- and pest-control products. The company reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings this week, but a weaker forecast for the full fiscal year caused the stock to fall 7%. In the third quarter of its 2015 fiscal year, which ended May 31, 2015, Monsanto earned $1.1 billion, up 33.0% from $858 million a year earlier. Earnings per share gained 47.5%, to $2.39 from $1.62, on fewer shares outstanding. That easily beat the consensus estimate of $2.07....

WAL-MART STORES INC. $75 (New York symbol WMT; Conservative Growth Portfolio: Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 3.2 billion; Market cap: $240.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 2.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.walmart .com) aims to spur its online sales with a new plan called ShippingPass that offers U.S. shoppers unlimited threeday shipping for $50 a year. This should help it compete with Amazon’s Prime service, which offers two-day shipping for an annual fee of $99. Thanks to investments like this, Wal-Mart’s online sales jumped 17% in the first quarter of its 2016 fiscal year, which ended April 30, 2015. Wal-Mart is also starting to see the benefits of its efforts to improve sales at its U.S. stores, including speeding up checkout lines and opening smaller stores. Same-stores sales in the U.S. (62% of total sales) rose 1.1%, the third straight quarter of growth....

AIMIA INC, $14.19, symbol AIM on Toronto, owns and operates Aeroplan, Canada’s largest loyalty program, with over 4.8 million members who collect Aeroplan miles from participating companies. Members can exchange miles for flights, car rentals, hotel rooms and merchandise. The company also owns Nectar, the U.K.’s biggest loyalty program. In addition, it has interests in Air Miles Middle East and Nectar Italia, as well as Club Premier, Mexico’s leading loyalty program. On January 1, 2014, TD Bank replaced CIBC as Aeroplan’s main credit card issuer. Under a 10-year deal, TD is now launching new cards under the Aeroplan banner, including cards for frequent flyers and small businesses. The agreement also let CIBC hang on to Aeroplan accounts held by customers who also bank at CIBC, which was about half of the Aeroplan portfolio....

BMTC GROUP $16.25 (Toronto symbol GBT; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (514-648-5757; No website; Shares outstanding: 43.1 million; Market cap: $799.9 million; Dividend yield: 1.5%) recently received shareholder approval for its plan to simplify its capital structure by moving from two share classes to one. As a result, it has converted all of its class A (one vote per share) and B shares (20 votes per share) into a single class of common shares (one vote per share). The common shares trade on the Toronto exchange under the new GBT symbol. Meanwhile, BMTC earned $59,000, or nil per share, in the quarter ended March 31, 2015, compared to a loss of $1.5 million, or $0.03 a share, a year earlier. Sales rose 2.9%, to $149.3 million from $145.1 million. Same-store sales gained 1.6%....

VANGUARD GROWTH ETF $108.87 (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 large U.S. companies. The fund’s MER is just 0.09%.

The $47.8-billion Vanguard Growth ETF’s top holdings are Apple, Google, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Oracle, Home Depot, Comcast, Amazon.com, Gilead Sciences and Walt Disney Co.

The fund’s breakdown by industry is as follows: Technology, 24.0%; Consumer Services, 21.3%; Health Care, 13.4%; Financials, 13.0%; Industrials, 11.7%; Consumer Goods, 9.4%; Oil and Gas, 5.3%; Materials, 1.5%; Telecommunication Services, 0.3%; and Utilities, 0.1%.

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When investors get in the habit of using one investment measure to buy stocks, they often find that it can be dangerously misleading.