dow

Pat McKeough responds to many requests from members of his Inner Circle for specific tips on stock investing as well as questions on investment strategy and the economy. Every week, his comments and recommendations on the most intriguing questions of the past week go out to all Inner Circle members. And each week we offer you a report on one of the stocks profiled in these Q&A sessions. We give you Pat’s buy-hold-sell recommendation as well as his analysis of the stock. This is part of the specific buy, hold and sell advice we offer you in our daily posts. Every week you get “A Stock to Sell” on Monday, “Best Canadian Stocks” on Tuesday, and “U.S. Stock Picks” on Thursday.

This week we had a question from an Inner Circle Member on a Canadian health care stock. Concordia Health Care takes a different approach from many larger drug firms, preferring to buy mature products as opposed to developing its own treatments. It recently acquired the rights to a second-generation epilepsy drug; its other main drug treats irritable bowel syndrome and enterocolitis. Concordia’s sales and share price have both risen. Pat looks at the challenges the company faces in finding new drugs and fighting off generic competition. Q: Hi: Would you give me your opinion on Concordia Health Care? Thank you.

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The ALPS Sector Dividend Dogs ETF, $38.79, symbol SDOG on New York (Units outstanding: 24.3 million; Market cap: $942.6 million; www.alpssectordividenddogs.com), is an ETF that applies the “Dogs of the Dow” theory on a sector-by-sector basis using the stocks in the S&P 500. The fund’s MER is 0.40%. The Dogs of the Dow approach involves buying the lowest-priced, highest-yielding stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. At the end of each year, you pick the 10 stocks from the 30-stock Dow with the highest dividend yields. You then invest an equal dollar amount in each, hold them for one year and repeat these steps annually. The ALPS Sector Dividend Dogs ETF picks five stocks from each of the 10 sectors as defined by the S&P 500 index—consumer discretionary, consumer staples, energy, financials, health care, industrials, information technology, materials, telecommunication services and utilities. The ETF picks the stocks with the highest dividend yields. Each holding is then equally weighted so that every company has a similar influence on the ETF’s total return. The end result is a portfolio of 50 large cap stocks....

When I sat down to write about the 2014 U.S. mid-term Congressional Election results, I was struck by how little things had changed since the 2010 mid-term. Here’s what I wrote four years ago for our Inner Circle Q&A about the 2010 U.S. mid-term: “November 9, 2010 Dear Inner Circle member,...

SPDR S&P 500 ETF $194.35 (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 that are chosen based on their market cap, liquidity and industry group.

The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Apple, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, J.P. Morgan Chase, Chevron, General Electric, Berkshire Hathaway, Wells Fargo, IBM, Pfizer, Verizon and AT&T. The fund’s expenses are just 0.10% of its assets.

If you want exposure to the S&P 500 Index, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF is a buy.

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DIVIDEND INDEX FUND $25.38 (Toronto symbol XDV; buy or sell through brokers; ca.ishares.com) holds 30 of the highest-yielding Canadian stocks. Its selections are based on dividend growth, yield and payout ratio. The weight of any one stock is limited to 10% of its assets. The fund’s MER is 0.55%. It yields 3.8%.

The fund’s top holdings are CIBC, 7.4%; National Bank, 6.9%; TD Bank, 6.7%; Bank of Montreal, 6.0%; Bonterra Energy, 6.0%; Royal Bank, 5.3%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 4.6%; BCE, 4.1%; Trans- Canada, 3.9%; and Laurentian Bank, 3.8%.

The ETF holds 53.0% of its assets in financial stocks. The top Canadian finance stocks have sound prospects. However, if you invest in this ETF, be sure to adjust the rest of your portfolio so it won’t be overly concentrated in the financial sector.

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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....

The Direxion iBillionaire Index ETF, $25.40, symbol IBLN on New York (Units outstanding: 1.4 million; Market cap: $35.6 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....

Some investors see last Thursday’s 300-plus point drop in the Dow Industrials as an omen of a more serious market downturn. They wonder if they should sell some of their stocks now, hold on to the cash for a few months, then buy the stocks back when they have obligingly come back down to lower prices. You can find plenty of support for this idea in the media. Mostly it revolves around the view that stock prices have gone up excessively, and are now too high. These assumptions rely on a highly selective view of history. For example, the Toronto exchange index has nearly doubled since March 2009, or about five and a half years. That is an unusually fast rise. But the market was at an exceptionally low level in March 2009. When you look at how the market has performed since a record-setting plunge, it always looks as if it has gone too high in an unusually short time....

SPDR DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE ETF $169.58 (New York symbol DIA; buy or sell through brokers; www.spdrs.com) holds the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The SPDR Dow Jones ETF’s top holdings are Visa, IBM, Goldman Sachs Group, ExxonMobil, Chevron, 3M, McDonald’s, Caterpillar, United Technologies and Boeing. The fund’s expenses are about 0.17% of its assets.

SPDR Dow Jones ETF is a buy.

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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....