VISA INC. $79 (New York symbol V; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 2.4 billion; Market cap: $189.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 13.3; Dividend yield: 0.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest electronic payments network. It can process over 65,000 credit, debit, prepaid and commercial transactions per second. Visa gets most of its revenue from the fees it charges card issuers and merchants that use its network. These fees are based on transaction volumes and other factors. The banks that issue the credit cards are responsible for evaluating customer creditworthiness and collecting payments, not Visa....

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For most of its 62-year history, grocery-store operator Metro focused solely on its home province of Quebec. In 2005, it successfully expanded to Ontario with its acquisition of the A&P chain. This purchase gave Metro the size it needed to compete with other supermarket chains, such as Loblaw, and with non-traditional food sellers, such as Wal-Mart. The company now aims to build on its recent success with several new initiatives. These include lowering its marketing costs by consolidating its banners and private-label brands. The company is also launching a new customer-loyalty program through a joint venture with a leading marketing firm. That should help it drive long-term sales growth. These initiatives will help Metro thrive in a fiercely competitive industry. Moreover, its stake in convenience-store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard is an overlooked asset....

Financial institutions that create and/or sell ETFs have done a superb job of shaping the terms of reference surrounding these investments. Every new ETF that comes on the market spurs lengthy discussions about the undeniable advantages of low-MER ETFs, compared to high-MER conventional mutual funds. This, though, is beside the point. It makes far more sense to compare low-MER ETFs to low-MER index funds. Focusing on ETFs or index funds can save you one or two percentage points a year, compared to investing in conventional mutual funds with yearly MERs in the 2.0% to 2.5% range. But these cost cuts do nothing to protect you against what I’d call the three deadliest and three most common investor mistakes:...