investment

We think conservative investors could hold up to 10% of their portfolios in foreign stocks. One way to do that is to buy carefully chosen exchange traded funds (ETFs) that have an overseas focus.

The best ETFs offer very low management fees and well-diversified, tax-efficient portfolios of highquality stocks.

Here are six international ETFs we like:

ISHARES MSCI JAPAN INDEX FUND $12.04 (New York Exchange symbol EWJ; buy or sell through brokers; us.ishares.com) is an exchange traded fund that tries to match the return of the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Japan index.

The ETF’s top holdings include Toyota, 6.1%; Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, 3.1%; Softbank Corp., 3.0%; Honda Motor, 2.5%; Sumitomo Mitsui Financial, 2.4%; Mizuho Financial Group, 1.8%; Hitachi, 1.4%; Takeda Pharmaceutical, 1.3%; Canon, 1.3%; and Mitsubishi Estate Co., 1.3%.

The fund’s industry breakdown is as follows: Financials, 21.5%; Consumer Discretionary, 20.9%; Industrials, 19.3%; Information Technology, 10.4%; Consumer Staples, 6.3%; Health Care, 6.0%; Materials, 5.9%; Telecommunication Services, 5.8%; Utilities, 2.5%; and Energy, 1.2%.

iShares MSCI Japan Index Fund was launched on March 12, 1996....

TRANSCANADA CORP. $47.76 (Toronto symbol TRP; Shares outstanding: 707.0 million; Market cap: $33.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.9%; www.transcanada.com) recently completed the purchase of another Ontario solar power facility from Canadian Solar (Nasdaq symbol CSIQ).

TransCanada now owns four of the nine solar farms it agreed to buy from Canadian Solar in 2011....

New technology has increased oil production from North American shale rock formations. Even so, oil prices have held up due to the improving global economy and lower output from conventional wells....

At first glance, managing an investment portfolio may resemble prize fighting, with an investor bobbing and weaving to get the upper hand on the market. But for successful investors, good portfolio management is much more like a multi-dimensional tightrope act. And you must be able to perform these 4 balancing acts to succeed.

Here’s the text of the quarterly letter I recently sent to our Portfolio Management clients: “In my last couple of quarterly letters, I talked about my belief that we’re in a secular bull market. This is a long-term stock-market rise that carries the market to successively higher levels over a period of a decade or two, if not longer. Secular bull markets generally start after a period of financial distress, when many investors feel at least somewhat negative toward the stock market. This period of financial distress may have lasted up to a decade, or longer. It’s a time when corporate earnings are weak or irregular, and investors assume they will stay that way indefinitely. Investor sentiment becomes extremely negative, and investors take it for granted that the market may be headed for another big downturn. The secular bull market begins around the time when investors begin to swing back to a more positive view of the stock market....

Stocks in the Manufacturing & Industry sector tend to be more volatile than those in the Finance, Utilities and Consumer sectors. Demand for their products moves up and down with the economy....

SHERRITT INTERNATIONAL (Toronto symbol S; www.sherritt.com) is a diversified natural resource company that produces nickel, cobalt, thermal coal, oil and gas. It also manages 356 megawatts of power generation capacity in Cuba, with an additional 150 megawatts starting up soon....

CGI GROUP INC., $34.96, Toronto symbol GIB.A, is Canada’s largest provider of computer outsourcing services. It helps its clients automate certain routine functions, like accounting and buying supplies. That makes companies more efficient and lets them focus on their main businesses. The company is the lead contractor for the Healthcare.gov website, which lets Americans shop for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare). Since the site began operating on October 1, 2013, visitors have had trouble logging on and evaluating the various health plans. As a result, fewer users than expected have signed up. These problems have prompted Massachusetts and Vermont to withhold scheduled payments to CGI. Other states may do the same or demand refunds. That’s mainly why the stock is down 7% in the past week....

BAXTER INTERNATIONAL INC. (New York symbol BAX; www.baxter.com) continues to expand overseas, which helps cut its exposure to the 2.3% excise tax it must pay on sales of medical devices as part of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare). In 2012, overseas markets supplied 58% of Baxter’s revenue....

Stocks in the Manufacturing & Industry sector tend to be more volatile than those in the Finance, Utilities and Consumer sectors. That’s because demand for their products moves up and down with the economy....