PepsiCo Inc.

SCOTIA U.S GROWTH FUND $8.65 (CWA Rating: Conservative) (Scotia Securities, 40 King Street West, 6th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 1H1. 1-800-268-9269; Website: www.scotiabank.com. No load — deal directly with the company.) looks at a company’s fundamentals such as earnings, dividend yield, book value, cash flow and low debt, as well as its management, to find undervalued stocks. The $45.8 million Scotia U.S. Growth Fund’s top holdings include PepsiCo, Transocean Inc. (oil & gas services), Colgate-Palmolive, Oracle Corporation (software), Snap-on Inc. (professional tools), Johnson & Johnson, ExxonMobil Corporation, Microsoft, Exelon Corp. (electric utilities), and Goldman Sachs Group (investment banking). The fund’s one-year loss in Canadian dollars is 12.0%, compared to a loss of 13.1% for the S&P 500 in Canadian funds over the same period. The fund’s MER is 2.53%....

MICROSOFT CORP. $29.39, Nasdaq symbol MSFT, has dropped its hostile takeover bid for Internet search firm Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq symbol YHOO). Microsoft raised its cash-and-stock offer, from $31 a share to $33, but Yahoo demanded at least $37. Microsoft had earlier threatened to present its offer directly to Yahoo’s stockholders. However, a long proxy fight would make it harder for Microsoft to retain Yahoo programmers and other key employees. As well, Yahoo would probably take steps to make itself less desirable to Microsoft. This might include outsourcing some of its Internet search business to rival Google Inc. Microsoft will continue to expand its online businesses through internal growth and smaller acquisitions. That could include increasing its 1.6% stake in privately held Facebook, a social networking Internet site with over 69 million users worldwide. Microsoft could expand its online revenues by integrating its Live search engine and Outlook email program with Facebook. It’s also possible that this week’s drop in Yahoo’s share price to around $26 will prompt Yahoo to negotiate a new deal with Microsoft....

FIDELITY FOCUS CONSUMER INDUSTRIES FUND $17.03 (CWA Rating: Aggressive) (Fidelity Investments Canada, 483 Bay St., Suite 200, Toronto, Ont. M5G 2N7. 1-800-263-4077; Web site: www.fidelity.ca. Load fund — available from brokers) invests mainly in U.S. consumer goods and services companies. Consumer spending is a key part of the U.S. economy, accounting for approximately two-thirds of activity. Fidelity Focus Consumer Industries Fund’s top holdings include Procter & Gamble, Nestle SA, Tesco, CVS Caremark, Toyota Motor, British American Tobacco, PepsiCo, DaimlerChrysler, Japan Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco. The $6.5 million fund is broken down by industry as follows: 12.3% in Food products, 11.5% in Media, 10.4% in Food & staples retailing, 10.2% in Household products and 10% in Beverages....

Here are three Fidelity funds that hold much of their portfolios in one specific sector. We generally advise against investing in funds that concentrate in one economic sector. For example, a fund concentrating in financial services is particularly vulnerable to any setbacks in that sector, or to interest-rate rises. However, all of these Fidelity funds stick with high-quality stocks. If you do invest in these funds, be sure to adjust the rest of your portfolio so these funds won’t overly concentrate your holdings in any one sector. FIDELITY FOCUS CONSUMER INDUSTRIES FUND $17.03 (CWA Rating: Aggressive) (Fidelity Investments Canada, 483 Bay St., Suite 200, Toronto, Ont. M5G 2N7. 1-800-263-4077; Web site: www.fidelity.ca. Load fund — available from brokers) invests mainly in U.S. consumer goods and services companies. Consumer spending is a key part of the U.S. economy, accounting for approximately two-thirds of activity....

IVY FOREIGN EQUITY FUND $28.85 (CWA Rating: Conservative) outperformed the Morgan Stanley benchmark international index over the last 10 years. The fund gained 4.1%, and that was better than the Morgan Stanley benchmark’s gain of 1.7%. Ivy Foreign Equity Fund lost 11.6% over the last year. The fund invests in companies based outside of Canada, but cuts risk by avoiding direct investment in emerging markets. Ivy Foreign Equity is one of our top foreign fund recommendations. Still, we think non-U.S. international funds should make up at most 10% of the holdings of a conservative investor. The fund’s top holdings are Reckitt Benckiser plc (UK household & healthcare products), McDonald’s Corp., L’Oreal SA (French cosmetics), Becton Dickinson (U.S. medical technology), Nestle SA, Henry Schein Inc., (U.S. healthcare), PepsiCo (U.S. food & beverage), William Demant (hearing health products) and Diageo plc (UK alcoholic drinks)....

IVY GROWTH AND INCOME FUND $21.37 (CWA Rating: Conservative) (Mackenzie Financial Corp., 150 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ont. M5S 3B5. 1-800-387-0780; Web site: www.mackenziefinancial.com. Load fund — available from brokers) is a balanced fund, holding a mixture of stocks, bonds and cash. The fund has returned 5.6% annually for the 10 years. It lost 6.6% over the last year. The fund’s MER is 2.10%. The fund’s top stock holdings are Shoppers Drug Mart, PepsiCo, Manulife Financial, Enbridge, Thomson Corp., McDonald’s Corp., Becton Dickinson (U.S. medical technology), Sun Life Financial, TD Bank, Walgreen Co. (U.S. pharmacies) and Diageo plc (UK alcoholic beverages). This $2.5 billion fund holds 24% of its assets in bonds. Interest rates on bonds are now under 5% annually in Canada. That’s the total return that a bond can provide, from today until it matures. However, bonds leave investors at the mercy of inflation, which shrinks the purchasing power of all fixed-return investments. In fact, an upsurge in inflation could wipe out all returns on bonds, and some of their principal besides....

At one time, mutual funds within a particular ‘fund family’ often shared some key investment characteristic, such as a conservative or aggressive investment approach, or a stress on value as opposed to growth. However, due to corporate mergers and takeovers in the mutual-funds industry, and more aggressive marketing, a fund’s membership in a fund family now has little bearing on its investment approach or appeal as an investment. Below, for instance, we analyse five funds from the Ivy Group. (Note that Ivy is now part of Mackenzie Financial, which in turn is part of IGM Financial. The contact information listed for Ivy Growth and Income also applies to the other four.)...

SONY CORP. ADRs $46.77, New York symbol SNE, rose 5% this week after Toshiba Corp. said it would abandon its HD DVD high-definition video format due to declining sales and market share. Sony is the leading developer of the rival Blu-ray format, and the demise of HD DVD should lead to higher royalty income from sales of Blu-ray players and discs. The end of the format war should also fuel demand for Sony’s high-definition TV sets, as well as its PlayStation 3 video game console which includes a Blu-ray DVD player. Sony is a buy....

FIDELITY FOCUS CONSUMER INDUSTRIES FUND $17.49 (CWA Rating: Aggressive) (Fidelity Investments Canada, 483 Bay St., Suite 200, Toronto, Ont. M5G 2N7. 1-800-263-4077; Web site: www.fidelity.ca. Load fund — available from brokers) invests mainly in U.S. consumer goods and services companies. Consumer spending is a key part of the U.S. economy, accounting for approximately two-thirds of activity. Fidelity Focus Consumer Industries Fund’s top holdings include Procter & Gamble, Nestle SA, Tesco, CVS Caremark, Toyota Motor, British American Tobacco, PepsiCo, Philips Electronics, Comcast Corp. and Sony. The $8.4 million fund is broken down by industry as follows: 9.6% in Media, 12.6% in Food products, 8.6% in Household products, 10.1% in Food & staples retailing and 9.2% in Automobiles....

Here are three Fidelity funds that hold much of their portfolios in one specific sector. We generally advise against investing in funds that concentrate in one economic sector. For example, a fund concentrating in financial services is particularly vulnerable to any setbacks in that sector, or to interest-rate rises. However, all of these Fidelity funds stick with high-quality stocks. If you do invest in these funds, be sure to adjust the rest of your portfolio so these funds won’t overly concentrate your holdings in any one sector. FIDELITY FOCUS CONSUMER INDUSTRIES FUND $17.49 (CWA Rating: Aggressive) (Fidelity Investments Canada, 483 Bay St., Suite 200, Toronto, Ont. M5G 2N7. 1-800-263-4077; Web site: www.fidelity.ca. Load fund — available from brokers) invests mainly in U.S. consumer goods and services companies. Consumer spending is a key part of the U.S. economy, accounting for approximately two-thirds of activity....