Toronto-Dominion Bank

Toronto-Dominion Bank reported higher earnings in the latest quarter for both its Canadian and U.S. businesses. Lower unemployment and stronger economic growth continue to lift demand for its loans. More generally, profit for banks in the U.S. and Canada tends to rise following interest rate hikes....

Successful investors recognize that when a company spends money on research and development, it can create a hidden asset with the potential to expand the company’s long-term profit.

Companies have to treat research and development spending as a day-to-day expense, much like maintenance or tax payments....

Preferred shares are equities that pay fixed dividends without offering investors voting rights. Still, those payments are made before dividends to common shareholders.

While investors are attracted to “preferreds” for income, those shares are sensitive to the movement of interest rates and their prices can be volatile....

FIRST ASSET ACTIVE CANADIAN DIVIDEND ETF $9.40 (Toronto symbol FDV; TSINetwork ETF Rating: Aggressive; Market cap: $32.1 million) aims to invest in Canadian dividend payers with the potential for capital gains. Its own dividend yield is a high 4.0%.

The ETF takes an active management approach: it relies on difficult-to-read market trends to pinpoint the economic sectors most likely to see significant growth; it then applies its own evaluative formula to companies in order to decide on the fund’s holdings.

The result is Energy comprises 27% of assets, followed by Financials (19%), Real Estate (15%) and Industrials (10%).

The fund has 46 stocks....

The six ETFs we update below mainly hold high-quality stocks that are widely traded on Canadian and U.S. ex- changes. Each fund tracks the performance of a major stock market index. That’s different from ETFs focused on narrower indexes or themes such as solar power and bio- technology.

Of course, you pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell these investments....

Many investors don’t realize how Canadian dividends receive an extra benefit for Canadian investors holding shares of Canadian companies. To get the most from your Canadian dividend-paying stocks, make sure to understand the rules of the Canadian dividend tax credit

TD BANK $74.82 (Toronto symbol TD; Shares outstanding: 1.8 billion; Market cap: $137.5 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.2%; www.td.com) has acquired Layer 6 Inc., a private company based in Toronto and specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) software....

TORONTO-DOMINION BANK $75 (Toronto symbol TD; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.85 billion; Market cap: $133.2 billion; Price-tosales ratio: 4.0; Dividend yield: 3.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.td.com) is Canada’s largest bank, with total assets of $1.3 trillion as of October 31, 2017....

Under pressure from shareholders and regulators, banks around the world have spent the past decade rebuilding their balance sheets, reducing costs and returning to their core banking business. After the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, much tighter government regulations, increased compliance costs and low interest rates have kept the recovery modest....

Thanks to a series of acquisitions, TD now has the broadest U.S. exposure of any Canadian big bank. In fact, it now has more branches south of the border than in its home market.

Unlike Canada, the U.S. has hundreds of smaller banks. TD’s strong earnings put it in a position to keep adding more of those firms to its American operations....