stanley

BAXTER INTERNATIONAL INC. $48 (www.baxter.com) makes a variety of medical devices. In July 2015, it spun off its pharmaceutical business Baxalta as a separate company. It later sold its remaining shares in Baxalta for a $1.1 billion gain. The company has used the cash from the sale to pay down its debt; as of June 30, 2016, its long-term debt was $3.2 billion, or a low 13% of its $25.3 billion market cap....

These six ETFs hold mostly blue chip, widely traded stocks on Canadian and U.S. exchanges. All of them mirror, or track, the performance of major stock market indexes. That’s opposed to narrower indexes focused on, say, resources or themes such as solar power or biotech....

ISHARES MSCI CANADA INDEX FUND $25.31 (New York symbol EWC; buy or sell through brokers; ca.ishares.com) holds the stocks in the Morgan Stanley Capital International Canada Index. The fund has a 0.48% MER and yields 1.6%. It began trading on March 12, 1996....

ISHARES INDIA 50 ETF $29.64 (Nasdaq symbol INDY; buy or sell through brokers; us.ishares.com) is an ETF that tracks the Nifty 50 index—the 50 largest, most liquid Indian securities. The ETF began trading in November 2009.

The fund’s top holdings are Housing Development Finance, 6.9%; Infosys (information technology), 6.8%; ITC Ltd....

ISHARES MSCI JAPAN INDEX FUND $11.89 (New York Exchange symbol EWJ; buy or sell through brokers; us.ishares.com) is an ETF that tries to match the return of the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Japan index. The fund’s top holdings include Toyota, 5.2%; Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, 2.2%; KDDI Corp....

STANLEY BLACK & DECKER INC. $114 (New York symbol SWK; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 150.1 million; Market cap: $17.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.5; Dividend yield: 1.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.stanleyblack anddecker.com) is one of the world’s largest makers of hand and power tools for consumers. This business supplies 64% of its sales. Stanley also makes building-security products, such as locks and gates (19% of sales), and specialized tools for auto mechanics and industrial workers (17%). Stanley makes acquisitions work ...

STANLEY BLACK & DECKER INC. $114 (New York symbol SWK; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 150.1 million; Market cap: $17.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.5; Dividend yield: 1.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.stanleyblack anddecker.com) is one of the world’s largest makers of hand and power tools for consumers. This business supplies 64% of its sales. Stanley also makes building-security products, such as locks and gates (19% of sales), and specialized tools for auto mechanics and industrial workers (17%). Stanley makes acquisitions work ...

When a company carries out a spinoff, it sets up one of its subsidiaries as a separate firm, then hands out shares in the new company to its own shareholders. I can still say without reservation that spinoffs are the closest thing you can find to a sure thing in the world of investing. Study after study has shown that after an initial adjustment period of months—not years—spinoffs tend to outperform groups of comparable stocks. (For that matter, the parent companies also tend to outperform comparable firms for several years afterwards.) There are a couple of reasons for that. First, company managers naturally prefer to acquire or expand their assets, not get rid of them. Getting rid of businesses reduces a company’s total potential profit. The management of a parent company will only hand out a subsidiary to its own investors if it’s nearly certain that the subsidiary, and the parent, will be better off after the spinoff....

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) give you a low-cost, flexible alternative to mutual funds. Here are five ETFs we recommend and one to sell.

ISHARES MSCI CANADA INDEX FUND $24.16 (New York symbol EWC; buy or sell through brokers; ca.ishares.com) holds the stocks in the Morgan Stanley Capital International Canada Index. The fund has a 0.48% MER and yields 2.4%. The index’s top holdings are Royal Bank, 7.9%; TD Bank, 7.1%; Bank of Nova Scotia, 5.4%; CN Railway, 4.2%; Suncor Energy, 4.0%; Bank of Montreal, 3.6%; Enbridge, 3.3%; Canadian Natural Resources, 2.8%; and CIBC, 2.8%. If you want to own a Canadian index fund, you should buy the iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF (see previous page). You’ll pay about a third of the management fees....