stock exchange

We wish all of our readers a great year-end holiday and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year. Please note that our next daily will appear on Friday, December 26.

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. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental piece of investing strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away.

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ISHARES MSCI CHILE INVESTABLE MARKET INDEX FUND $41.09 (New York symbol ECH; buy or sell through brokers) is an ETF that aims to track the MSCI Chile Investable Market Index, which consists of stocks that mainly trade on the Santiago Stock Exchange.

The fund’s top holdings are S.A.C.I. Falabella (retail), 10.3%; Enersis SA (electricity), 9.6%; Empresas Copec SA (conglomerate), 7.8%; Empresa Nacional de Electricidad (electricity), 7.2%; LATAM Airlines, 5.5%; Banco Santander Chile (banking), 5.0%; Empresas CMPC (pulp and paper), 4.6%; Banco de Chile, 4.5%; Cencosud SA (retailer), 4.4%; and Quimica y Minera de Chile (mining), 3.9%.

The fund’s industry breakdown is: Utilities, 25.9%; Financials, 18.7%; Materials, 12.8%; Consumer Discretionary, 12.5%; Consumer Staples, 9.5%; Energy, 7.9%; Industrials, 7.8%; Telecommunications, 2.4%; and Information Technology, 2.0%.

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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 high quality stocks. Here’s a look at six global ETFs:...

Every Monday we feature “A Stock to Sell” as our daily post. With every stock we recommend as a sell, we give you a full explanation of why we advise against investing in the stock at this time. Adidas AG (ADR) (symbol ADDYY on the U.S. over-the-counter market; www.adidas.com) together with its subsidiaries, develops, makes and markets athletic equipment and clothing worldwide. The company operates through six segments: Wholesale, Retail, TaylorMade-Adidas Golf Company, Rockport, Reebok-CCM Hockey and Other Centrally Managed Brands....

VANGUARD FTSE EMERGING MARKETS ETF $40.01 (New York symbol VWO; buy or sell through brokers) aims to track the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) Transitions Index, which is made up of common stocks of companies in developing countries. The fund’s MER is just 0.15%.

The Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF’s top holdings include Taiwan Semiconductor (Taiwan: computer chips), China Mobile (China: wireless), Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Brazil: oil and gas), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (Brazil: banking), China Construction Bank, Tencent Holdings (China: Internet), Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Naspers Ltd. (South Africa: media) and Hon Hai Precision Industry (Taiwan: electronics).

The $59.3-billion fund’s breakdown by country is as follows: China (20.6%), Taiwan (13.7%), Brazil (13.7%), India (9.9%), South Africa (9.7%), Mexico (5.7%), Russia (5.4%), Malaysia (5.2%), Indonesia (2.9%), Thailand (2.8%), Turkey (1.9%), Chile (1.7%), Poland (1.7%) and others (5.1%).

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ATLANTIC TELE-NETWORK $58.52 (Nasdaq symbol ATNI; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (340- 777-8000; www.atni.com; Shares outstanding: 15.9 million; Market cap: $914.6 million; Yield: 2.0%) raised its quarterly dividend by 7.4%, to $0.29 a share from $0.27, with the October 2014 payment. It now yields 2.0%. Atlantic closed the sale of its Alltel wireless business to AT&T (symbol T on New York) late last year. It now holds cash of $407.6 million, or $24.64 a share, and has paid off its $271.1 million of debt. The company could use its high cash balance to make acquisitions or expand its remaining operations. It could also make further dividend increases or pay special dividends....

SYMANTEC CORP., $21.94, symbol SYMC on Nasdaq, plans to break itself into two publicly traded companies. One will keep the Symantec name and focus on antivirus and security software and services. This business had $4.2 billion of revenue in Symantec’s 2014 fiscal year, which ended March 28, 2014. The other company will consist of Symantec’s information management (IM) operations, which include data backup and recovery software. It had $2.5 billion of revenue in fiscal 2014....

Adidas AG (ADR), $36.92, symbol ADDYY on the U.S. over-the-counter market (ADRs outstanding: 418.4 million; Market cap: $15.4 billion; www.adidas.com), together with its subsidiaries, develops, makes and markets athletic equipment and clothing worldwide. The company operates through six segments: Wholesale, Retail, TaylorMade-Adidas Golf Company, Rockport, Reebok-CCM Hockey and Other Centrally Managed Brands. Adidas was founded in 1920 and is headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany. It was known as Adidas-Salomon AG until 2006, when it shortened its name to Adidas AG. Its main listing is on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange....

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment management companies. The group administers over $2 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. Canadians can, however, buy Vanguard exchange traded funds (ETFs) that trade on stock exchanges. We don’t recommend all of Vanguard’s ETFs, but here are two we do see as low-fee buys....

BELLATRIX EXPLORATION $5.24 (Toronto symbol BXE; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (403- 266-8670; www.bellatrixexploration.com; Shares outstanding: 191.1 million; Market cap: $1.1 billion; No dividends paid) is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange, also under the BXE symbol.

Bellatrix originally listed its common shares on the NYSE MKT (formerly the American Stock Exchange) on September 20, 2012. Switching to the main New York exchange should raise its profile and increase its liquidity.

The company has also formed a new joint venture with Grafton Asset Management. Under the deal, Grafton will contribute $250 million toward the development of some of Bellatrix’s extensive landholdings in Alberta. Bellatrix will also commit $250 million. To put that in context, Bellatrix’s cash flow was $148.7 million, or $0.84 a share, in the first half of 2014.

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