investment

More and more investors seem to look on the involvement of celebrity investors like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates as something of a pedigree for a stock....

We recommend that investors diversify up to 30% of their portfolios into U.S. stocks and as much as 10% into international securities. One attractive way for safety-conscious investors to do this is with exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Today we look at several ETFs from a U.S. firm that offer a low-fee way to achieve this diversification. We profile two Vanguard ETFs that track a U.S. large-cap index and an emerging market index.

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment management companies. In all, it administers almost $3 trillion U.S. in 170 mutual funds.

Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S., because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces.

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Today, we look at a Canadian bank stock that has consistently paid dividends for 186 years. Bank of Montreal has benefited both from expansion outside of Canada and low interest rates in recent years. The bank continues to make acquisitions in the U.S. and the U.K. Recently it agreed to buy General Electric’s transportation-financing business, adding $11.5 billion in assets. Low interest rates have also helped the bank by increasing demand for loans. Between 2010 and 2014, the bank’s earnings rose by more than 50% and over the past three years, BMO has raised its dividend six times. We recommend BMO as a blue chip stock to buy for conservative investors.

BANK OF MONTREAL (Toronto symbol BMO; www.bmo.com) is Canada’s fourth-largestbank, with $672.4 billion of assets.

The bank has steadily expanded beyond Canadain recent years. For example, in 2011, it acquiredWisconsin-based banking firm Marshall & Ilsley for$4.0 billion in stock. That more than doubled thenumber of branches Bank of Montreal operates inthe U.S. and added two million customers.

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The need for perspective comes up virtually every day in the life of a successful investor. That’s because your daily experience helps to mould your view of the world. It gives you an idea, right or wrong, about how current events will affect your investments. When you lack perspective, it’s easy to jump to mistaken conclusions and make costly investing errors. This came to mind on Friday, when the Dow slumped more than 200 points. The drop was at least partly a response to the Paris terrorist attacks. Some investors undoubtedly sold stocks in panic, out of fear that similar attacks would break out throughout the west....

Brookfield Property Partners LP, $29.75, symbol BPY.UN on Toronto (Units outstanding: 262.8 million; Market cap: $21.3 billion; www.brookfieldpropertypartners.com), owns, operates and invests in commercial real estate worldwide. Its portfolio includes:

• 243 office properties totalling over 114 million square feet, mainly in leading commercial markets like New York, London, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Sydney, Toronto, Houston, Calgary and Perth;
• 172 regional malls and stand-alone stores containing 154 million square feet in the U.S. and Brazil. The company mainly holds its retail properties through its 29% interest in General Growth Properties, Inc. and its 33% stake in Rouse Properties, Inc.;
• Roughly 44 million square feet of industrial space across 164 properties, mainly consisting of warehouses in North America and Europe, with an additional 11 million square feet under construction;
• About 26,900 multi-family units across 89 properties in the U.S. and Canada;
• Eleven hotels with over 8,560 rooms across North America and Australia; and
• Over 300 properties leased to automotive dealerships in the U.S. and Canada.

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Genworth MI Canada, $29.92, symbol MIC on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 91.8 million; Market cap: $2.7 billion; www.genworth.ca), is a leading Canadian residential mortgage insurer. It provides this service through its subsidiary, Genworth Financial Mortgage Insurance Company of Canada. Right now, it has $390 billion of insurance policies written. In the three months ended September 30, 2015, Genworth’s revenue rose 19.9%, to $260.1 million from $217.0 million a year earlier. Earnings per share gained 3.1%, to $1.00 from $0.97. Genworth continues to gain market share, and it aims to manage both its credit risk and its investment portfolio conservatively. Still, it needs Canadian housing markets to remain stable, or at least suffer just a modest decline in activity, to keep reporting improved results....

Visa, a global leader in credit and debit payments, expands into the fast-growing area of online and mobile payment transactions.

: The shares of IBM are down, but its proven ability to adapt to new conditions makes it a value stock with strong growth potential

There are many things to look for when evaluating a stock—and one of the most important is hidden assets

The more complicated features there are in an exchange-traded fund (ETF), the more the managers can charge in fees and the more hidden risks you face when investing in ETFs.