etf

ISHARES AUSTRALIA INDEX FUND $26.45 (New York symbol EWA; buy or sell through brokers) is an ETF that holds the 72 largest Australian stocks. Its MER is 0.48%.

The fund’s top holdings include Commonwealth Bank of Australia, 11.1%; BHP Billiton, 10.5%; Westpac Banking Corp., 9.6%; Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, 8.3%; National Australia Bank, 7.3%; Wesfarmers, 4.3%; Woolworths, 4.2%; CSL Ltd., 2.9%; Rio Tinto, 2.3%; Woodside Petroleum, 2.3%; Telstra Group, 1.9%, Westfield Group, 1.9%; and Macquarie Group, 1.4%.

Australia benefits from its stable banking and political systems....

Tricon Capital Group, $7.36, symbol TCN on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 90.5 million; Market cap: $674.3 million; www.triconcapital.com), is focused on North American residential real estate development. It has about $1.9 billion of assets under management. Tricon manages limited partnerships that provide financing to developers, usually in the form of loans, mainly for single- and multi-family construction and retail developed in conjunction with residential projects. Since its inception in 1988, Tricon has financed about 160 transactions for over $11 billion worth of developments. The company currently owns 22,500 single-family lots and 6,300 apartment units, as well as over 3,300 single-family rental homes in the U.S....

MARKET VECTORS VIETNAM ETF $21.72 (New York symbol VNM; buy or sell through brokers) holds shares of Vietnamese companies or foreign firms that get a significant amount of their revenue from Vietnam.

The ETF’s top holdings are Masan Group (food, resources and banking conglomerate), 7.9%; Vincom Corp. (real estate), 7.6%; Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam, 6.9%; Baoviet Holdings (finance and insurance), 5.8%; PetroVietnam Fertilizer & Chemical, 5.7%; PetroVietnam Technical Services (oilfield services), 5.7%; and Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (an Indian oil and gas firm), 4.8%.

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Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund ETF, $21.82, symbol XLF on New York (Shares outstanding: 851.4 million; Market cap: $18.6 billion; www.spdrs.com), holds a number of stocks we recommend in Wall Street Stock Forecaster as its top holdings, including Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and American Express. It also holds some stocks we don’t recommend, including its second-largest holding, Berkshire Hathaway. Unlike many holding companies, Berkshire Hathaway trades at a premium to its net asset value. We think the company is fully valued at today’s share price. What’s more, its chairman and CEO, famous investor Warren Buffett, celebrated his 83rd birthday last August. When he dies, or if he becomes incapacitated, the stock is vulnerable to a sudden and severe downturn....

From time to time, companies set up one or more of their divisions or subsidiaries as an independent firm, then hand out shares in that company to their own investors as a special dividend, or “spinoff.” You can contrast a spinoff with a new stock issue. That’s when a company (often a newly created or junior company) issues new stock to sell to the public. The two situations are like two sides of a coin—one favourable to investors, the other unfavourable. The motivations of the companies are nearly opposite. Companies sell new issues to the public when they feel it’s a good time to sell. That may be, and often isn’t, a good time for you to buy. In addition, the underwriting brokerage firms try to spark publicity about the new issue, and they pay extra commission (as much as double the regular rates) to spur their salespeople to sell the new issue to their clients. This tends to create a high-water mark in the price of the new issue. Unless the new company can follow up with business success, the price of the new issue may languish for months or years....

The Guggenheim Spin-off ETF, $44.67, symbol CSD on New York (Units outstanding: 17.0 million; Market cap: $759.4 million; www.guggenheiminvestments.com), aims to track the Beacon Spin-off Index. The ETF’s MER is 0.78%. The Beacon Spin-off Index consists of 24 stocks. Companies can be included if they have been spun off in the past 30 months. There are no limitations on market capitalization (or the total value of a company’s outstanding shares), but companies in the index are mainly small- and mid-caps with capitalizations under $10 billion. Beacon defines a spinoff as any firm resulting from either of the following events: a parent company’s distribution of shares in a subsidiary to its own shareholders or “partial initial public offerings,” in which a parent company sells a percentage of a subsidiary’s shares to the general public....

ISHARES FTSE/XINHUA CHINA 25 INDEX FUND $35.84 (New York symbol FXI; buy or sell through brokers) is an exchange traded fund that aims to track the FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index, which is made up of the 25 largest, most liquid Chinese stocks. All of the stocks in the index trade on the Hong Kong exchange....

The Schwab U.S. Broad Market ETF, $45.86, symbol SCHB on New York (Units outstanding: 67.4 million; Market cap: $3.1 billion; www.schwabetfs.com), aims to offer diversified exposure across large- and small-cap U.S. stocks. It tracks the roughly 2,500 stocks in the Dow Jones U.S. Broad Stock Market Index. The ETF has an MER of just 0.04%. It yields 1.8%. The index’s 10 highest-weighted stocks are Apple, Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Google, Chevron, Wells Fargo, Berkshire Hathaway and J.P. Morgan Chase....

Vanguard Information Technology ETF, $92.36, symbol VGT on New York (Shares outstanding: 54.8 million; Market cap: $5.1 billion; personal.vanguard.com), aims to track the MSCI U.S. Investable Market Information Technology Index, which mainly consists of large U.S. companies in the IT area. The fund’s MER is just 0.14%. The $5.3-billion fund’s top 10 holdings are Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco Systems, Intel, Facebook, Oracle, Qualcomm and Visa. The ETF is broken down by segment as follows: Internet software and services (18.2%), hardware (14.4%), systems software (13.7%), chips (10.4%), data processing and outsourced services (10.2%), communications equipment (8.8%), consulting and other services (8.1%), applications (6.3%), storage and peripherals (3.3%), computer chip equipment (1.8%), components (1.7%), manufacturing services (1.4%), equipment and instruments (1.1%), distributors (0.7%) and home entertainment software (0.6%)....

SPDR S&P CHINA ETF $74.08 (New York Exchange symbol GXC; buy or sell through brokers; www.spdrs.com) aims to track the S&P China BMI Index, which is made up of all publicly traded Chinese stocks available to foreign investors. Right now, this ETF holds 251 stocks.

The $778.9-million fund’s top holdings are Tencent Holdings, 8.8%; China Construction Bank, 6.0%; China Mobile, 5.3%; Baidu, 5.2%; Industrial & Commercial Bank, 5.1%; Bank of China, 3.2%; CNOOC Ltd., 2.9%; China Petroleum & Chemical, 2.4%; PetroChina, 2.4%; and China Life.

The ETF was launched on March 19, 2007. It has a 0.59% MER and yields 1.3%.
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