etf

While they sometimes lack high-growth potential, utilities are generally stable, profitable businesses with limited competition—and they offer investors high yields. As a result, as a group, they have a better long-term stock market performance than the overall market and come with less volatility and risk.


The U.S....

The Republic of Turkey has a large economy that’s grown by an average of 4.7% per year for the past two decades. However, recent political turmoil has wreaked havoc on the currency, which has in turn pushed interest rates to punishing heights. Investing in Turkey entails significant risk, but the potential rewards could be huge.


Here is one ETF that provides exposure to the top Turkish public companies.


ISHARES MSCI TURKEY ETF $24.64 (Nasdaq symbol TUR; TSINetwork ETF Rating: Aggressive; Market cap: $403.4 million) tracks the performance of the largest publicly listed Turkish companies.


Financial companies account for 29.5% of its assets, while Industrials (16.7%), Consumer Defensive (12.7%), Basic Materials (15.4%), Energy (8.5%) and Telecommunications (6.4%) are other key segments.


The ETF holds a portfolio of 53 stocks; the top 10 holdings make up a sizeable 63.0% of its assets....

Measured by the stocks held in the iShares Turkey ETF, the forward distribution yield on the portfolio is a high 4.1%, with a p/e ratio of 7.0. This makes the ETF one of the cheapest among emerging markets.


If investors consider the profitability of some of the largest Turkish companies, just how potentially attractive those low p/e’s are becomes even more apparent....

Earlier this year, Vanguard Canada added a fourth balanced fund (a mix of stock ETFs and bond ETFs) to three others that it launched in January 2018.


Here’s a look at all four of these ETFs:


VANGUARD CONSERVATIVE INCOME ETF PORTFOLIO $25.81 (Toronto symbol VCIP), holds roughly 20% of its assets in Vanguard stock ETFs and 80% in bond ETFs....

The dramatic downward movement in U.S. government bond yields in March reverberated through the markets, with interest rate-sensitive groups, such as real estate and utilities, benefitting strongly from renewed expectations for lower, or at least steady, interest rates.


The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT.O) tracks long-term U.S....

Exchange-traded funds 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 of that index or sub-index and will allow the fund to “track” its performance.


The MER (Management Expense Ratio) is generally much lower on ETFs than on conventional mutual funds....

To help you decide if certain ETFs are suitable for your portfolio and investment temperament, we classify them into three easy-to-understand categories: Conservative, Aggressive and Income. To determine how an ETF fits into one of those three classifications, we examine a number of factors....

As a group, higher-yielding stocks, such as utilities, have lagged the broader indexes over the past decade. Part of that was due a preference by many investors for faster growing tech stocks such as Netflix, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and so on.


Moreover, utilities and other other high-yield stock, such as REITs, typically suffer when interest rates rise as they did in 2018....

iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF offers exposure to that country’s top big-cap and mid-cap stocks, many of which are global leaders in their industries.

VANECK VECTORS VIETNAM ETF $16.96 (New York symbol VNM; buy or sell through brokers) holds Vietnamese companies and foreign firms that get a significant share of their revenue from the Southeast Asian nation.






The ETF’s top holdings are Vingroup (conglomerate), 8.5%; Vietnam Dairy, 8.0%; Vinhomes (real estate), 7.3%; Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam, 6.0%; BH Co....