investment

AASTRA TECHNOLOGIES, $19.82, symbol AAH on Toronto, develops and markets products and systems for accessing communication networks, including the Internet. Its technology is centred around business telephone systems and includes products that integrate land lines and mobile phones. In the three months ended December 31, 2012, the company’s sales fell 12.3%, to $175.2 million from $199.7 million a year earlier. Sales declined in all regions, including Western Europe, where Aastra gets the majority of its revenue. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange rates, sales declined 7.1% from a year earlier. Earnings per share rose sharply, to $2.42 from $1.30, due to a number of one-time items, including income-tax recoveries. Without those items, Aastra would have earned $1.15 a share in the latest quarter....

Pat McKeough responds to many personal questions about the best stocks to invest in and other topics on investment and the economy from the members of his Inner Circle. 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 one of the highlights from these Q&A sessions. While we reserve our buy-hold-sell advice for Inner Circle members, these excerpts provide a great deal of information and analysis on stocks we’ve covered for members of Pat’s Inner Circle. This week, one Inner Circle member in search of a U.S. stock asked us about one of the most iconic brands on the American market, Coca-Cola. Pat looks at the company’s penetration of international markets and its efforts to broaden its market with healthier products, while taking into account the increasing appeal of private-label beverages to price-conscious consumers. ...

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 $10.17 (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%; Honda Motor, 2.7%; Sumitomo Mitsui Financial, 2.4%; Mizuho Financial Group, 2.2%; Canon, 1.8%; Takeda Pharmaceutical, 1.8%; Softbank Corp., 1.5%; Fanuc Corp., 1.3%; and Japan Tobacco Inc., 1.2%.

The fund’s industry breakdown is as follows: Consumer Discretionary, 20.7%; Financials, 20.1%; Industrials, 20.0%; Information Technology, 10.8%; Health Care, 6.9%; Materials, 6.6%; Consumer Staples, 6.3%; Telecommunication Services, 4.4%; Utilities, 2.6%; and Energy, 1.6%.

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

LOBLAW COMPANIES $40.37 (Toronto symbol L; Shares outstanding: 281.7 million; Market cap: $11.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 2.2%; www.loblaw.ca) has risen 20% since it announced its plan to hold the bulk of its properties in a real estate investment trust in December 2012.

Even so, the stock still trades at a reasonable 16.3 times the $2.47 a share that Loblaw earned in 2012....

Hidden value is one of the key factors we examine when we look for top stocks. A company’s brand name is one good example of an underappreciated asset. Balance sheets often fail to assign any value to brands, even household names that have built up multitudes of loyal customers over the years. Two weeks ago we looked at the value of the brand of Canada’s best known tech company. (View the article here.) Today we examine another company whose strong brand is helping it grow internationally. THOMSON REUTERS CORP. (Toronto symbol TRI; www.thomsonreuters.com) gets 57% of its revenue and 50% of its earnings by selling news and information to professionals in the banking industry. It also sells specialized information products to clients in the legal, accounting and scientific research fields....

PRIMARIS RETAIL REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $27.02 (Toronto symbol PMZ.UN; Units outstanding: 97.8 million; Market cap: $2.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 4.7%; www.primarisreit.com) has received a friendly $28-a-share takeover bid.

The offer is from H&R REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $23.73 (Toronto symbol HR.UN; Units outstanding: 194.2 million; Market cap: $4.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 5.7%; www.hr-reit.com).

The H&R bids tops the $26-a-share in-cash hostile takeover bid from a consortium led by Canadian private equity firm Kingsett Capital. This group includes RioCan REIT $26.67.

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CANADIAN REIT $44.81 (Toronto symbol REF.UN; Units outstanding: 68.2 million; Market cap: $3.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 3.3%; www.creit.ca) owns over 190 properties, including retail, industrial and office buildings, across Canada and in Chicago. These holdings contain over 19.3 million square feet of leasable area. The trust’s occupancy rate is 94.8%.

In the three months ended September 30, 2012, Canadian REIT’s revenue rose 13.1%, to $94.7 million from $83.7 million a year earlier. Cash flow per unit rose 11.7%, to $0.67 from $0.60.

Canadian REIT added $308.4 million of properties in the first three quarters of 2012, including two office buildings, a further investment in the Dartmouth Crossing (Atlantic Canada’s largest unenclosed mall) and the completion of several development projects. That total also included its $156.0- million purchase of a 50% interest in Calgary Place, a 575,000-square-foot office and retail complex.

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ALLIED PROPERTIES REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST $34.39 (Toronto symbol AP.UN; Units outstanding: 64.0 million; Market cap: $2.2 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 4.0%; www.alliedpropertiesreit.com) owns 126 office buildings, mostly in major Canadian cities. These mainly Class I properties contain over 9.1 million square feet of leasable area.

Class I refers to 19th- and early-20th-century light industrial buildings that have been converted to office and retail space. They usually feature exposed beams, interior brick and hardwood floors.

The trust bought $456 million worth of properties in 2011. In the first three quarters of 2012, it added a further $300 million of acquisitions. Allied has a 92.1% occupancy rate.

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Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific investment advice on a wide range of topics, including strategies for international stock markets. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investing strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “Foreign investments can strengthen your portfolio and here are 3 ways you can do it with less risk.”...

Many investors spend a lot of time worrying about the wrong things, while paying little attention to anything that has a direct impact on the value of their investments. For instance, at times they may mull over every tidbit of economic information that comes out, and how it differs from its predecessor of a week or a month earlier. They hope to detect a pattern—a sign that the economy is mending and headed for a return to steady growth, or deteriorating and doomed to plunge into a renewed recession. These investors often feel they can cut their investment risk by selling some or all of their stocks in times of high risk, and buying them back when risk is low. This never works well for long. It’s hard to pinpoint market turning points, if only because so many smart people are trying to do the same thing. You’ll rarely if ever sell near the top, nor buy back near the bottom. If you could do that with any consistency, after all, you’d wind up owning a measurable proportion of all the money in the world. If you constantly worry about the “big picture,” you may at times manage to sell at just the right moment to sidestep a serious downturn. But you may only do that after sitting through a series of downturns. The downturn you avoid may turn out to be the last in a series—the “final leg downward,” as short-term traders like to refer to it....