diversification

Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific investment advice. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investing strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Tip of the week: “Focus your investing strategy on quality and diversification—not economic forecasts.” Economic forecasts attract way more investor attention than they deserve, in view of the meagre advantage, if any, that they add to your investing strategy. In fact, most experienced, successful investors feel skeptical, if not downright cynical, about economic forecasts, for three reasons....

Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific advice on successful investing, including portfolio diversification. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investment strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away....

ZARGON OIL & GAS $21.61 (Toronto symbol ZAR; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (403-264-9992; www.zargon.ca; Shares outstanding: 23.8 million; Market cap: $513.5 million; Dividend yield: 7.8%) is the new name of Zargon Energy Trust following its conversion to a dividend-paying corporation on January 7, 2011. The move is in response to Ottawa’s new tax on income trust distributions, which came into effect on January 1, 2011. Zargon must now pay corporate taxes. As a result, it plans to lower its monthly dividend by 22.2%, to $0.14 a share, with the February 2011 payment. That will give the stock a 7.8% yield. The company produces oil and natural gas in Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota. Its output is weighted 58% to oil and 42% to natural gas. This diversification helps cut its risk....

PLEASE NOTE: Next week, Stock Pickers Digest will reveal its #1 pick for 2011. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to profit. ZARGON OIL & GAS LTD., $21.90, symbol ZAR on Toronto, is the new name of Zargon Energy Trust following its conversion to a dividend-paying corporation on January 7, 2011. The move is in response to Ottawa’s new tax on income trust distributions, which came into effect on January 1, 2011. Zargon must now pay corporate taxes. As a result, it plans to lower its monthly dividend by 22.2% with the February 2011 payment. That will give the stock a 7.7% yield....

I hope you are enjoying and profiting from our free TSI Network daily updates. Our dailies aim to educate you on best practices in investing. They cover a wide range of investment topics, and explain conservative strategies you can use to build the best portfolio for you, and expand your wealth with less risk. The advice you get in our daily updates, as well as our investment newsletters and services (more on these below) is based on the experience I’ve built up in more than three decades in the investment business (starting with a part-time job in high school)....

SCITI Trust, $13.53, symbol SIN.UN on Toronto, (Shares outstanding: 15.3 million; Market cap: $206.8 million; www.scotiamanagedcompanies.com) first issued units at $10, and began trading on Toronto in April 2003. It was scheduled to wind up on April 29, 2008. However, unitholders voted in March 2008 to continue the trust. SCITI Trust is now scheduled to wind up on August 13, 2013. Unitholders also voted to change the trust’s investment mandate. Previously, SCITI Trust’s portfolio consisted of the 100 largest income trusts by market capitalization included in the Scotia Capital Income Trust Index. The trust’s portfolio is now based on a new index, the Scotia Capital High Yielding Equity Index (the “Scotia HYE Index”). This index tracks the highest-yielding stocks and income trusts on the Toronto exchange. The trust now holds the top 50 highest-yielding issues in the Scotia HYE Index, on an equal-weight basis....

When investing in the stock market, as in life, it pays to remember that most things we worry about never happen. It’s in our nature. As humans, we are bred to overreact to, dwell on or even brood over any hint of risk. Today’s common investment-related worries include the possibility of Japanese–style deflation in North America, currency wars, the threat of war on the Korean peninsula and the potential need for more European bailouts. ...

Northern Abitibi Mining, $0.15, symbol NAI on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 71.8 million; Market cap: $10.4 million, www.naminco.ca), is focused on exploring its Viking gold project in Newfoundland. So far this year, the company has completed a total of 9,735 metres of drilling in 58 holes. It has also excavated 13 new trenches, from which it has collected 985 surface samples and 243 soil samples. The company has intersected gold mineralization in many holes, including intervals such as 80.9 metres grading 0.8 grams of gold per tonne in one hole and 32 metres grading 1.8 grams per tonne in another....

ISHARES MSCI EMERGING MARKETS INDEX FUND $46.07 (New York symbol EEM; buy or sell through brokers), is an exchange-traded fund that aims to track the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. The fund’s geographic breakdown includes: China, 18%; Brazil, 15.9%; South Korea, 13%; Taiwan, 10.4%; South Africa, 7.8%: India, 7.1%; Russia, 6.4%; Mexico, 4.4%; Malaysia, 2.8%; and Indonesia, 2.6%. iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund’s top holdings are Petrobras (Brazil: energy), 3.4%; Samsung Electronics (South Korea: electronics), 2.1%; China Mobile (China: wireless), 1.6%; Vale SA (Brazil: mining), 1.6%; Gazprom (Russia: gas utility), 1.5%; Banco Itau (Brazil: banking), 1.5%; Taiwan Semiconductor (Taiwan: computer chips), 1.5%; America Movil (Brazil: wireless), 1.5%; and Infosys Technologies (India: software), 1.3%. The fund’s industry breakdown is as follows: Financials, 25.3%; Energy, 14.0%; Materials, 14.0%; Information Technology, 12.5%; Telecommunication Services, 8.2%; Industrials, 7.2%; Consumer Staples, 6.9%; Consumer Discretionary, 6.9%; Utilities, 3.5%; and Health Care, 0.9%....

The quality of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) varies widely. All too many exist to tap into popular, but risky, themes and fads. So you need to be highly selective with your ETF holdings. ETFs offer very low management fees. In addition, the best ETFs offer well-diversified, tax-efficient portfolios of high-quality stocks. Here are five foreign ETFs we like:...